Star Wars New Teaser

[TheRealJoeFish]

You're ultimately playing the odds - with everything, not just with going to the movies.  Think of how many movie screens there are in the US (about 39,000), and how many shootings have taken place at movie theaters (what, 3 or 4 over the last 4 years?).  Without trying to make you more paranoid, you should be more worried about getting into a car accident on the way to the theater than you should be about being shot once you're there.  The chances are very, very good that you can go to the movies and enjoy your time with your daughter without having to worry about a shooting taking place.

If you're really worried, don't go at peak times.

I'm'a do another of my little "back of the napkin" calculations here.  All numbers are very rough averages and all math is on-the-fly.

Suppose Star Wars gets $150 million its opening weekend (that would put it in the teens for best openings ever; it could very well get more).

With inflation and 3d and stuff, we'll say maybe $15 per ticket.  So, that's 10 million tickets sold.

Maybe 9.5 million of those tickets will involve a drive to the theater (the other 5% will walk, bike, etc).  On average, there are 1.5 deaths per 100,000,000 miles traveled.  Suppose the average round trip to the theater is 10 miles, and the average car ride there has one driver and one passenger.  So, that's 9.5*10/2 = 47.5 million miles traveled, so about one person will die either directly on the way to or on the way from the theater to see Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  If we want to throw in factors for 1) most of the driving is in cities (there are actually way *fewer* fatalities for auto passengers in cities than rural areas), 2) most driving being at night (which would increase fatalities, I'd imagine) and 3) the population of drivers skewing quite young (again, increasing), it might be safe to say 2 or 3 people will die on opening weekend on the way to or from SW.

So, if you think (the chance someone shoots up a theater)*(the likely number of people killed if he does) > 2.5, say, then you should indeed be more worried about that than the car ride there.  Putting the above quantities at 1% and 20 (both of which I think are too high), you're still 12x more likely to die in your car on the way to the movie than due to being shot during the movie itself.