Sex and the City, the movie way, way too many years in the making, finally arrived in the Big Apple, where distributor New Line Cinema decided to greet the movie’s pathologically avid fans with a boldly counterintuitive marketing strategy—a movie premiere so swanky, so ultra-hip, that people like them couldn’t get through the door. Fans had been exchanging tickets on Craigslist for weeks, in a buyer’s market that had driven ticket prices far beyond insanity into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Then, when those fans arrived at the gala, they discovered New Line had oversold the event by more than 2,000 tickets, while some invisibly tiny print on said tickets cautioned that seats were only available on a first-come, first-served basis. Needless to say, things got ugly fast. New Line declined to comment on the snafu, or even to send out a press rep to take the heat. Actually, that’s only sensible—getting tenderized by 2,000 pairs of Manolo Blahniks is an especially nasty way to go.

The Daily News, which gave away 100 tickets to the New York premiere, is vowing to seek additional screenings for those who got turned away. Meanwhile, fans of the series should try to get past this setback. (Admittedly, for some of them it’s a pretty costly setback.) Carrie Bradshaw didn’t let her life go off the rails when Mr. Big moved to Napa, and she could have power-shopped her way past a missed movie premiere in a single afternoon.