Jackson Movie Breaks Records With Ticket Pre-Sale

The Michael Jackson documentary “This Is It” is racking up pre-sales for the film’s release on October 27, 2009.

Jackson fans in Los Angeles began camping out on Thursday night to purchase their tickets to the LA screenings, and sold out the 3,000 seats for the movie’s first night’s run, on all 14 screens of the LA Live Cinemas, within two hours.

Footage for the documentary was shot in rehearsals for Jackson’s “This Is It” series of concerts in London, which were cut short with Jackson’s death in June from an accidental overdose of Propofol.

The film also accounted for 80 percent of all US online movie ticket sales within the first 24 hours of being available online.

In London, the film out-performed sales for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy with a whopping 30,000 tickets of single-day sales.

Japanese entertainment press reported sales topping three million yen (over $1 million) within the first 24 hours on sale.

France, Australia, Germany and New Zealand also reported first screenings as being sold out.