Assigned Seating for Movies?

[Mike53421]

In the spirit of the other thread which looked at movie ticket prices and was thinking most recently with The Dark Knight, do you think assigned seating for big movies would be a good idea in North America, at least for opening weekend?

I think it'd be interesting, when I saw The Dark Knight at the midnight screening (it was my second viewing) we had paid our $13 or whatever for IMAX, arrived 10:30pm and were stuck in the front row because tons of people had "reserved" 10 seats for their friends who hadn't arrived. Of course, the ushers didn't enforce anything.

I'm wondering how the system would work, if you would charge equal cost for all seats and just be able to get assigned seats A & B, or if the first three rows or so would be discounted and the others at a premium. Seems like it could help with having to wait in line on opening night or for people who save seats or throw their jackets over seats on popular nights.

Thoughts? With summer movie season around the corner, especially Watchmen next week we're bound to encounter similar circumstances. Works for sporting events and everything else, don't see why it couldn't for a movie theatre.