Following the temporary collapse of the fan fiction website A03, extremely horny millennial women are on the hunt for other ways to get their rocks off—and Regal Cinemas execs are more than happy to help.
On Tuesday, the movie theater chain announced that for one night only, on November 16, it will be screening 4DX versions of episodes 5 and 6 of Heated Rivalry, the smash-hit gay hockey show adapted from the bestselling novels by Rachel Reid that first aired on the Canadian network Crave but blasted into the mainstream when it came to HBO Max. The screenings will be at 59 theaters across the US, as well as a handful of theaters in Canada and the United Kingdom.
The screenings are intended to give fans the opportunity “to go to the cottage and really experience” Hollanov all over again, says Jack Grimes, senior director of alternative business development at Regal.
The 4DX screenings are upping the ante for the fan-favorite Heated Rivalry screenings, which have been selling out in movie theaters across the US for the past month. Though the series is widely available to stream, fans have flocked to theaters to shout along to t.a.T.u’s “All the Things She Said” during the club scene in episode four and post photos of the Heated Rivalry–themed popcorn buckets featuring stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams in a sweaty, shirtless embrace. Thus far, such public displays of down bad-ness have been incredibly lucrative: as of November 8, Regal has earned $1.4 million from its limited theatrical release, per Variety’s reporting.
Still, Heated Rivalry isn’t an obvious candidate for a 4DX release. Originating in South Korea in 2009, 4DX technology provides an immersive experience for the viewer, such as motion-enabled chairs; environmental effects like wind, snow, and rain; or even scents, such as the smell of gunpowder or explosives during battle scenes. It’s mostly been used for big-budget action-adventure movies and thrillers such as The Odyssey and Avatar: The Way of Water.
Recently, however, there’s been increasing demand for 4DX big-screen releases for not just conventional action movies but also straightforward dramas, comedies, and even romances. Put another way, there’s evidence that a not-insubstantial number of the filmgoing public would like nothing more than a two-hour license to hump their seats.
For instance, as the result of what was essentially an extremely online in-joke, last month the film distributor Black Bear hosted 4DX screenings of the romantic black comedy Wicker, starring Olivia Colman as a woman who falls in love with a straw-plaited man (Alexander Skarsgaard). The screening featured such immersive special effects as water splashing in the audience’s faces when Colman’s character empties out her chamber pot, as well as synchronized motion-activated “thrusts” in the audience’s seats during sex scenes.
Grimes tells WIRED that the idea to produce 4DX Heated Rivalry screenings was in part inspired by the intense social media response to Wicker.
“We think the demographic overlap is really significant between the two,” he says. “They’re both very female-driven, in terms of what the viewership looks like.” The sales numbers for the Heated Rivalry screenings “emphasized that we needed to bring this to life,” Grimes says.
In general, filmmakers are increasingly becoming more creative about how they incorporate 4DX effects into their work. According to a Vulture interview with Jaehyun Jeong and Jaesang Yoon, two producers for the special effects company CJ 4DPlex, Paul Thomas Anderson specifically requested “sexual movements” for a scene in One Battle After Another in which Sean Penn’s character masturbates.
When asked about which specific effects will be used for Heated Rivalry, Grimes says CJ 4DPlex is in the process of coding the 4DX version, so he couldn’t say for sure. But he says it will likely “lean a lot into the motion effects,” albeit “where it makes sense to do so and where it’s going to be tasteful to do so.”
Does that mean the chairs will thrust during sex scenes, as some randy fans have speculated? “I mean, it’s, it’s something that we saw in Wicker, so I wouldn’t say that it’s out of a stretch of imagination to say it’s going to happen here,” Grimes says.
Unfortunately, the effects will perhaps not be quite as explicit as they were in Wicker, as it’s worth noting that episodes 5 and 6 are significantly less graphic than those earlier in the season. But it’s still tempting to consider how, exactly, Regal plans to incorporate special effects into the screening. Chirping crickets during the cottage scenes? Ice chips flying around when Kip rushes down to the rink to make out with Scott to the adrenaline-pumping percussive strains of “I’ll Believe in Anything”? An unidentified substance spraying in the audience’s faces when Ilya finishes off Shane while he’s on a call? The mind reels.
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