Texting blamed for summer movie flops

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 22:35:14 -0400
> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Subject: Texting blamed for summer movie flops
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
>
>
> Dave - Again, Hollywood looks to push the blame for poor sales on anything
> other than quality products......first Napster, then CDRWs, then DVD
> burning, then P2P in general, and now, TEXT MESSAGING?????
>
> -rick
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=434778
>
> Texting blamed for summer movie flops
> By Andrew Gumbel
>
> 18 August 2003
>
> In Hollywood, 2003 is rapidly becoming known as the year of the failed
> blockbuster, and the industry now thinks it knows why.
>
> No, the executives are not blaming such bombs as The Hulk, Charlie's Angels:
> Full Throttle or Gigli on poor quality, lack of originality, or general
> failure to entertain. There's absolutely nothing new about that.
>
> The problem, they say, is teenagers who instant message their friends with
> their verdict on new films - sometimes while they are still in the cinema
> watching - and so scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns designed
> to lure audiences out to a big movie on its opening weekend.
>
> "In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick
> Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You
> could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because
> it took time to filter out into the general audience."
>
> But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message
> devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for movie-goers to tell
> their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time
> and money.
>
> Five years ago, when summer movies were arguably just as bad as they are
> now, the average audience drop-off between a film's opening weekend and its
> second weekend was 40 per cent. This summer, it has been 51 per cent. In
> some cases, the drop-off has started between the film's opening on a Friday
> night and the main screenings on Saturday. The upshot: unsuccessful films
> disappearing from cinemas so fast that there is no time for second opinions.
>
> A 56 per cent drop over the first week of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
> was not what the studio moguls had expected. As Arnold Schwarzenegger
> himself might say, hasta la vista, baby.

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/