It is currently 1 AM, and I am writing this instead of sleeping. That should tell you how much I was looking forward to this.
UCI Cinemas and The Space confirmed that the Italian presale would open in the night between the 4th and 5th of October, at one minute past midnight. The film itself arrives in Italian cinemas on the 16th of December.
As you can probably guess, a lot of people had the same idea.
The sites could not keep up
The UCI Cinemas website crashed under the traffic. The Space Cinema did not do much better, and showed an error code 500 for many people. I do not blame anyone for this. Opening a presale for a film this big at midnight is a stress test for any website.
My experience
I was one of the lucky ones, or at least I think so. I only had to wait about half an hour before I got through. For a launch like this, that felt pretty good.
The seat
I booked a seat for the 00:05 showing, which is the night between the 15th and 16th of December. I will be honest, it is not the most comfortable time to go to the cinema. But it is one of the first showings in Italy, and for me that matters more.
I also chose the V.O. screening. For readers outside of Italy, here is what that means. Italy has one of the strongest dubbing traditions in the world, and nearly all foreign films are dubbed into Italian. V.O. stands for "versione originale", which is the Italian term for original version, usually shortened to VO. In practice, it means the film is shown in its original language with subtitles. So for me, it means hearing the actors' real voices.
There was one more surprise. When I opened the seat map, nobody else had booked anything yet. I was the first one. That meant I could pick any seat in the room, so I did.
Final thoughts
Was the wait annoying? A little. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Now I just have to survive until December.