Continuing on a theme from a previous post, from Time:
In the old days — like, until yesterday — movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. But in the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers tweet their opinions on a film to millions of “followers.” Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the new weekend.
That appears to be the lesson from the studio estimates issued on July 13 for the weekend box office. Brüno, the Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy in which an Austrian fashion journalist shoves his flamboyant gayness in the faces and other body parts of unsuspecting Americans, won the weekend with $30.4 million, a bit above most industry expectations for an R-rated provocation whose star was unknown to the mass audience until his Borat became a surprise hit in 2006, earning more than $260 million at theaters worldwide on an $18 million budget. Yet Brüno’s box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film’s brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers — and that their tut-tutting got around fast. Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect.
The Twitter effect might be a tad overstated. To me it’s more the “Facebook status effect” than anything, but since tweets are public it’s easier to measure buzz this way. I already speculated in the earlier post that Hollywood is going to battle this “Twitter effect” by banking on more sure things, like sequels and (comic) book adaptations. But I’m sure there’s another way, one that’s more dynamic and not too much on the nose. Perhaps film studios will scale down on mid-level film budgets (especially advertising) a bit and look for the new “Juno” time and time again? Maybe this new age will bring a new polarity of 200 million dollar superfilms and a huge selection of indies, that some make it big and most don’t?
Thanks to Jani for the tip.
Making forced sequels or comic book adaptations won’t help at all, if word-of-mouth is accelerated, then crappiness is revealed in a hearbeat and the only thing that matters is whether the movie exceeds the expectations of the crowd.
However, Brüno’s case was that they’re handling the subject in such a way that many feel too awkward to enjoy the movie. I didn’t, and laughed all the way.
I disagree a bit. A comic book adaptation will at least get a big opening weekend before the crappiness is revealed. Start the movie with 4000 screens in week one, and work your way down. It’s still a relatively good strategy. If a 200 million movie gets 100 million in its opening weekend, it has practically assured itself profitability already.
comic book adaptations HAVE GOTTEN a big opening weekend so far but they’re based on characters created 20-40 years ago. but do the kids of today really read comics? i’d say no. even the first hellboy was released 15 years ago and that is a LONG time.
I think the more important question is that does it MATTER that kids haven’t read the comic book the movies are based on? For the most part, I’d say no. You can immerse the basics of any comic book mythology the same week you’re going to see it, it’s fairly easy. It’s also becoming more and more “acceptable” to do so and say you’re a “fan”.
If you read Slashfilm you’ll notice that there’s an obscene amount of remakes, reboots, adaptations and sequels in the works. It’s really a staggering amount.
From my point of view, I think it is even easier for film studios that kids didn’t read the comic books first. Thus, they can do whatever they want with the charismatic characters without any respect for the original comic’s story. Look at Wolverine’s movie.. such a shame for any X-Men fan… but most of the people that go to see the movie had no idea about how disrespectful the movie was to the comic’s author. But anyway…