AMC Theatres’ website almost crashed Sunday (Nov. 28) when it began offering advanced tickets to Sony Pictures’ pandemic-delayed Spider-Man: No Way Home, now debuting in theaters on Dec. 17.
Driving the slowdown was AMC’s first foray into the non-fungible token (NFT) market. Specifically, the nation’s largest exhibitor, beginning Nov. 28, tweeted it would offer the first-ever NFTs surrounding the “Spider-Man” movie franchise to the first 86,000 AMC Stubs Premiere, AMC Stubs A-List, and AMC Investor Connect members who bought advanced tickets online.
The announcement triggered an influx of online traffic, causing a surge as customers tried to get their hands on the unique digital artwork, or NFTs, that can be traded like shares of stock.
Subscribe HERE to the FREE Media Play News Daily Newsletter!
“It’s like we broke the internet,” CEO Adam Aron told Fox Business Network’s “The Claman Countdown.” “My tweets in the last 24 hours have been read three-and-a-half million times. The traffic we had to our website and mobile app last night were the highest that AMC has ever seen.”
Adam said AMC worked with Sony and blockchain expert WAX to come up with 100 different NFTs around No Way Home. The strategy worked as AMC sold more tickets Sunday night than it has ever sold in an overnight shift before.
“We’re talking massive surges above normal,” Aron said.
When asked if No Way Home would be the chain’s highest-grossing release, Aron said the title is currently locked in a battle with the 2018 Marvel Studios’ release Avengers: Endgame, a title that grossed nearly $2.8 billion in ticket sales, including $858 million domestically.
“It’s really close,” he said. “The point is, [No Way Home] is a really big movie. It’s going to be a really big movie. And we sold a tremendous number of tickets.”