Did The Pavilion Oversell Tickets To The Hunger Games?

As expected, the film that pairs a Battle Royale-esque notion of kids hunting each other for survival with the sexy teen faces of a Twilight movie has made bank. The Hunger Games will gross an estimated $155M this weekend alone.

Hot damn.

No doubt this initial success means that the film will linger in theaters for the next few months, and maybe into the summer. Why then, knowing that people are going to scramble for tickets from now until forever, would a theater oversell tickets to shows on opening weekend? It appears that Park Slope's own Pavilion theater -- most recently in the news not for its bedbugs, but for its inability to treat an American flag properly  -- has done just that. On Saturday we received this angry email from an anon FiPS reader:

I thought you guys might be interested to know that The Pavilion is overselling tickets for The Hunger Games and then turning away people who already have tickets if they don't arrive to the theatre early.

I bought tickets on Thursday and arrived to a Friday screening, on time. Even though I had tickets, I was told I couldn't get in (they fully admitted that they oversold the show). There was also a woman with four kids who was in the same situation that they turned away, too.

The manager was not really apologetic. They refunded my money, but I was pretty surprised that they weren't more sympathetic (they were just like, "Yeah, we oversold the show. Here's a refund." I also had to demand the refund -- they definitely didn't offer it).

Pavilion, I get that you want to make money. I do. But this is bad business. The last thing you want on your hands is an angry Park Slope mom who's had to walk from the North Slope with her tweenage kids chanting, "HUNGER GAMES! HUNGER GAMES!" the whole damned way, only to learn that -- Guess What! -- even though she Fandango-ed her tickets a week ago, she's still not getting in to see the movie, which means she has to tell her kids that they're going to have to rent High School Musical instead. And the tweens are going to blame their mom for "not knowing how to properly use the fucking Internet to buy tickets" and refuse to clean their rooms or eat vegetables ever again.

Overselling movie tickets has been known to cause riots, Pavilion.

Did anyone else have a similar experience over the weekend?