It wasn't that there was an enormous amount of money spent telling the audience you're going to love this picture, there was an army of people who are fans who became ambassadors for the film and told their friends and generated tickets from the ground up.
To be sure, Warner Brothers executives have touted the success earlier this year of the Web site of "The Perfect Storm" in generating ticket sales for the movie.
Nonetheless, this approach has worked: the film has become China's biggest ever box-office success, generating ticket sales of more than $222m£130m0m) in less than a fortnight.
The actress Jessica Chastain, fresh off an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for "Zero Dark Thirty," wasn't just generating ticket sales at the movies last week.
Broadway producers have always relied on star actors to generate ticket sales for shows, but this spring some stars are the shows, with four plays now on tap that are essentially solo performances.
Competition was minimal; the holdovers "Last Vegas" (CBS Films), "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" (Paramount) and "Free Birds" (Relativity Media) were virtually tied in second place, with each generating ticket sales of roughly $11 million.
But it's hard to avoid thinking that had they chosen to recite the alphabet in counterpoint (which might have been more fun), their joint appearance would still generate ticket sales unknown for a straight play since Julia Roberts appeared in Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain" (which had a cast of three instead of two) three years ago.
Led Zeppelin would have had to generate ticket sales of nearly $1 billion for Branson to turn a profit as promoter.
If anything, Minority Report adds to the evidence that stars are much less important than they seem in generating ticket sales (see: The Myth Of Stars).
Five years ago, the Panthers' objective with Twitter, and arguably most professional teams, was to direct traffic to the team website, generate ticket sales and keep fans informed — that's it.
