Like the notion of the matrix itself, the release of The Matrix Revolutions, the third installment in the science fiction trilogy conceived by Andy and Larry Wachowski, boggles the mind.
In a first-ever global theatrical debut, the movie opened Wednesday on 10,013 screens in more than 50 countries and in 43 languages, including Hungarian, Mandarin and Turkish. Theaters began showing the movie at precisely the same hour worldwide, beginning in Los Angeles at 6am, in New York at 9am, in Moscow at 5pm and at 11pm in Tokyo.
What's more, moviegoers didn't have to wait to see, up close, the film's humans battling machines on giant screens: the movie is also being released for the first time simultaneously in Imax theaters in nine countries.
"It's showmanship," said Alan Horn, president of Warner Brothers Entertainment, which is distributing the movie. He said the global debut was the brainchild of the trilogy's producer, Joel Silver.
"We think it's theatrical, it's fun, it's exciting," Horn said. "We talk about having event movies at Warner Brothers and this is a way to further event-ize our movies."
But there is also a practical reason for Warner Brothers to open Revolutions in so many theaters from the start. With a worldwide release, Horn said, the studio hopes to stave off pirates who record and distribute illegal copies of movies in countries where a film has not yet opened. (In some countries the film will be either dubbed or shown with subtitles.) And just as important, Warner Brothers wants to make as much money as it can during the movie's first few weeks to protect against a sudden falloff in attendance.
When Warner Brothers released the first Matrix in 1999, it did not know what a hit it had on its hands; it even sought a partner to cushion the financial risk. That movie, despite mixed reviews, became a cultural phenomenon, earning US$171.5 million at the domestic box office and made a bona fide star of Keanu Reeves, who played the movie's hero, Neo. Avid fans saw it repeatedly and told friends and family to see it, too.
The movie was even more of a hit abroad, where it earned an additional US$289.4 million, according to the studio. The DVD, too, was in great demand. Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, has sold an extraordinary 30 million DVD's of The Matrix so far.
But when the second installment, The Matrix Reloaded, opened last May, many critics and fans panned it, saying that it failed to live up to the ingenuity of the first Matrix movie and that the public relations hype was overblown. Fans flocked to theaters the first weekend, but attendance dropped off sharply after that.
Like the new installment, Reloaded opened on a Wednesday and the domestic box office take for the first five days was US$135 million, with US$93.3 million earned during its first weekend, according to Warner Brothers. The second weekend's box office tumbled to US$56.4 million. Ultimately the movie took in US$280 million at theaters in the US, with the majority of that earned in its first two weeks. The movie was more popular abroad, taking in US$455 million.
Industry analysts suggest that even if the third movie, Revolutions, gets a ho-hum response from critics, that will not deter moviegoers in the first week, particularly fans curious to see how the story ends. But already some are suggesting that the third movie's debut will not top the second installment's. In recent weeks Warner Brothers has parceled out a steady diet of Matrix images to keep the trilogy uppermost in consumers' consciousness.
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