The Hobbit Accounts For 76% Of All Tickets Sold On Fandango

It has been a relatively slow time at the box office. Movies like Brad Pitt’s Killing Them Softly and the maligned romantic comedy Playing for Keeps didn’t lure audiences to multiplexes. People are starving for wonder and magic at the movie theaters.

Is it any real surprise that Fandango says The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and the upcoming Les Miserables are dominating early ticket tracking?

In a press statement, the ticket-selling service says that Peter Jackson’s first chapter in the planned Hobbit trilogy represents 76% of all sales on Fandango, while Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the beloved stage musical Les Miserables holds the second-place slot on the tickets-sold chart. The site even polled the people who bothered to buy Hobbit tickets early, and crunched some interesting stats. Fandango discovered:

· 91% of respondents have seen a previous Lord of the Rings film;
· 81% have read at least one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original books;
· 90% were glad to see original Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson back to direct The Hobbit;
· 73% were also fans of the Harry Potter franchise while only 27% considered themselves fans of the Twilight franchise;
· 72% are happy that The Hobbit story spans three different installments;
· 61% claimed Jackson’s high-frame-rate technology made them more curious to see the movie.

Which stats surprise me? Well, 9% of those polled haven’t seen any of Jackson’s Rings movie, yet still plan to see The Hobbit. A whopping 61% are interested in the higher-frame-rate presentation (despite early, tepid reviews). And 27% of those polled admitted to liking Twilight! Who are those people?

We’ve had a lot of great Hobbit content leading up to the movie’s release, and we have a few more major features planned before Friday. Do you have your Hobbit tickets yet? And in what format do you plan to watch it?