Movies are a social experience. That is if you like movies! If you’re like me and my friends you want to go to opening weekend to see movies like “Captain America: Civil War”, “The Hobbit – Battle of Five Armies” or “Deadpool”. Notice a trend. We definitely tend to like Marvel movies.
We usually plan for a big release like Civil War. First step is to create a Facebook Event for our friends. The next one is to buy tickets. In recent years many theaters are moving to select your seat. This is good and bad. Good in that you can sit exactly where you want and bad because if you’re going with a large group you may not be able to sit together. People don’t always buy tickets at or near the same time. After we select our seats we post our seat numbers in the Event as a comment. But there has to be a better way right?
I has boggled the brain why Facebook hasn’t teamed up with Fandango or one of the bigger chains such as AMC or Regal. Here is how my idea will work:
- Create a Facebook event as you usually do
- Select a movie event – This would tie in to ticketing and theaters.
- Choose your Title you want to see at the Theater and time.
- Buy your tickets.
- After you buy your tickets, when a member of the group buys their they can see where you are sitting. They can buy next to you or where ever they like. It makes it much easier to plan.
- Then have the option to share in the event you just bought tickets and the seat numbers.
- After have people rate the movie via a site like Rotten Tomatoes
- This could then be fed into Facebook and give recommendations for future movies.
This could also be a regular post as well. Just post “Hey we are going to see “Insert Movie” at “insert theater” at “insert time”, who wants to join? Then have them click to buy tickets and find out.
Why is this possible now? I think with the recent announcement from Facebook about Messenger bots the time is right. It could be used to sell tickets and send you your tickets in messenger.
There is a question about privacy in the mix. One way around this is your could see your friends you are tied to in a different color, without names. There could be more privacy issues as well. This is just an idea an concept.
This is my dream of planning a night to the movies. Its it technologically feasible? I am not sure right now. However, I believe Facebook wants to move in this direction. Maybe one day this will become reality. But for the time being I will have to do it old school.