Theater screws up and shows Rise of the Guardians instead of Guardians of the Galaxy by mistake

A Regal Cinemas movie theater in New Jersey apparently “confused” today’s release of Guardians of the Galaxy with Rise of the Guardians, a Dreamworks animated film released in 2012. I can’t even begin to imagine how that happened, but it happened.

Totally trolled as our local theater accidentally started showing “Rise of the Guardians” instead of #gotg – so #rva pic.twitter.com/g4mKILAbax

— Dean Browell (@dbrowell) August 1, 2014

I worked at a local Regal Cinemas, and there were constant screw ups several times a week, especially during the summer. Back then theaters still used film, but now everything is digital, so double checking would’ve been a good idea. Cinemablend came up with a very possible explanation for this “mistake.”

Well, in the time since this story has gone viral, many projectionists and theater works have spoken up. Apparently, Rise Of The Guardians has been shown recently as part of some children’s matinee clubs. More than likely, someone labeled the digital file in the hard drive as “Guardians”. Then, whoever was cueing up the movie saw Guardians already listed and never bothered uploading the right movie into the system. As a result, when there became a clear problem, there wasn’t an easy solution to fix it, especially since the other midnight screenings were likely full.

Movie theater mistakes are nothing new, they’ve been happening since forever, but taking an extra couple of minutes to double check is the difference between an upset customer that had to wait a bit for the start of the movie, and an upset customer wanting their money back. Let’s remember last year’s screw up when a Florida’s Regal Cinemas theater showed a very explicit red band trailer for Nymphomaniac to kids that had gone to see Disney’s Frozen, that sure went sour extremely fast.