« Box Office Hell Shaves Its Balls | Main | More Money, More Ball... »

July 10, 2009

Idiot Trend Story Of The Day

Twitter's effect on opening weekend box office is the latest line of bull about opening weekend word of mouth... I mean, how many times will this idiotic flag be thrown up to see who salutes before either media stops selling these absurdities - though they might be good for talking head slots on cable TV - or something actually happens that makes it true? (Kinda like the media playing trend roulette.)

It's no surprise that the journalist most likely to take trend hype (and herself) way too seriously, Sharon Waxman, is out selling this one. But with due respect to Dick Cook, Gordon Paddison, Peter Adee, and the most sanely quoted of the group, Marc Shmuger... Puh-LEEZE!

Up's opening weekend was stronger because of Twitter? The Hangover opened to $45 million instead of $42 million because of Twitter? Really? Are we really trying to sell this as a trend?

Land of The Lost actually had a smaller Friday-to-Saturday percentage drop as The Hangover on the same opening weekend. How do we read this, Kreskin?

Pixar's animated movies trend similarly year after year after year, with occasional minor exceptions.

But now we have Twitter so, it must be about Twitter? Don't people remember when this same line of bull was being used about text messaging?

"The net effect, some studio executives say, is that a marketing spend that used to take a movie through the weekend now only really takes a studio through Friday evening, east coast time."

Whoever the unnamed execs are... you have lost your f-ing minds.

And of course, the two bombs of the summer... all about Twitter. It's not that they behaved like movies that people just didn't want to go see... period. The kids are Twittering... Barbara Walters is Twittering... so it is now THE THING, responsible for earthquakes, coups, internal bleeding, and box office!!!

If you want to convince me about this idiocy, show me a SINGLE example that actually shows a real trend variation. Show me a SINGLE movie that trends up in some truly unexpected way because of "someone may have 1,000 friends, and say, ‘I saw the movie -- don’t bother,’ or ‘I saw the movie -- it’s great.'"

How about The Hurt Locker? Let's see sold out shows all weekend because everyone who sees it seems to love it.

Or what about Twilight? You couldn't ask for a movie more in the Twitter wheelhouse, right? 41% first Saturday drop from Friday... then a 42% Sunday drop. Hmmm...

How about two movies that will do similar domestic grosses, but which are dramatically different in how they are perceived: Terminator Salvation and The Proposal. Terminator seems like more the Twitter movie, right? But it's Fri-to-Sat drop was 1.9%, in spite of everyone I know HATING the movie. Then Sat-to-Sun, it was down just a reported 9.1%

The Proposal was quite well liked within its base... and off .8% Fri-Sat and 34.4% Sat-Sun.

What happened? Did every woman and teen boy in America turn off their Twitter acct for the weekend, allowing the word-of-mouth bomb to drop more gently than the well-liked career-high Sandra Bullock hit?

I HATE this kind of bullshit. HATE. Because other journalists get caught up in this crap and run stories and when it becomes apparent that teen boys are NOT avoiding movie theaters or texting is NOT changing the dynamic from Friday to Saturday or now, that Twitter (which by the way, is a less effective communication device than texting or Facebook and no more immediate) is NOT killing movies on Friday afternoon, and then they are embarrassed about being wrong and hang onto the lie for years to come so as not to admit to what suckers they were the first time around.

This kind of stuff is so very irresponsible. The only people it ever helps are people trying to sell this stuff to their clients, bosses, or media outlets. Horrible.

Posted by dpoland at July 10, 2009 12:20 PM

Comments

Not that I buy in to the Opening Weekend "Twitter Effect" but the The Proposal might be a more Twitter movie. It's my understanding that Twitter's popularity is being driven by older users, and that it skews slightly female. It's apparently not "the kids" this time.

Posted by: djk813 [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 10, 2009 03:28 PM

Twilight is more of a MySpace movie, isn't?

(oh god, I can't believe I just typed that)

Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 10, 2009 11:58 PM

I agree with you in the sense that there is no noticeable difference between now and, say, this time last year, because of Twitter. But social networking, mostly Facebook, definitely has to have had an effect on box office in a word of mouth capacitor kind of way. Whether or not its effects are observable/measurable is a different story.

Posted by: a_loco [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 11, 2009 12:42 AM

Why does it "have to?"

Not saying it can't or won't.

But why do people keep feeling compelled to obsess on the new watercooler being different than the old watercooler?

Didn't teenagers use telephones a decade ago? Hasn't anyone seen Bye Bye Birdie?

Posted by: David Poland [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 11, 2009 10:07 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?