Bad Movies - Industry upset your telling friends (1 Viewer)

[Paul Bartlet]

Seen this on slashdot.org , was surprised at some of it.

"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."

So, remember the (insert bad movie) you saw and thought, how could they release a movie this bad, they knew.

In case link didn't show up properly inside quote - it's here

mods, wasn't sure to post in "Movies" or "After Hours", but it does relate to Movies in general.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I would welcome a ban on text messaging. It's silly. Just call the person rather than spend 5min typing in your message

 

[Chris Atkins]

As a movie fan, I take offense to HULK being mixed in with that other dreck.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Well, I'd rather have someone text-message someone in a theater than call them on the phone- at least I won't hear them that way!
I saw this subject on another forum and honestly thought it was a joke! They seem to say that people should be locked up in isolation chambers after seeing a movie so that they don't tell anyone how bad it is!

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Well, I'd rather have someone text-message someone in a theater than call them on the phone- at least I won't hear them that way!

But their phone is supposed to be off anyway

 

[TheBat]

As a movie fan, I take offense to HULK being mixed in with that other dreck.

I AGREE Chris..Hulk was the best movie of the summer.. I didn;t see CA 2 or gigli.. they look like crap.

JACOB

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future.

That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. The MPAA doesn't have any authority to ban something like that. (They could start by "banning" non-stop talkers, crying babies, etc.)

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Unbelievable! They are out of their friggin' minds!

I'm still cracking up that they even thought about this, let alone put it in print form - of any kind.

Did they bother to even think about the TV reviews too? The news, entertainment shows and that pair over in Chicago.

I'm not even going to mention free speech - oops!

It is funny, because if you went back pre-PC people just used the phone, and the word got around the country almost as quick, especially when a film would start in a few cities, and hit the rest the next week.

I'm waiting for a gag order to pop up for the schools, too!

I think we have a good cause to get the MPAA broken up now.

Glenn

 

[Paul Bartlet]

I dunno, reading posts here, I'm not sure you get the meaning. The Movie Big Wigs are upset that news travels to quickly today that a certain movie is BAD/Sucked.
Five years ago, they could release a movie knowing full well it wasn't any good, and by the time word of mouth got around they had made their money back and some profit.
Today, they are saying, word of mouth is traveling to quickly on the "bad movies" (via cell phone) and sales are dropping off to quickly.

It boils down to, if you have seen a movie that you think wasn't any good, they would like to " s l o w " down how many people you tell that too.

 

[Malcolm R]

They just need to stop making bad movies. Problem solved!

 

[Morgan Jolley]

In the videogame industry, a bunch of companies have started mass-cancelling bad games nearly halfway through development (Capcom just cancelled 70+ game projects earlier this year). Why? Because they realized that if a game sucks, everyone is probably going to know about it before it comes out.

Shiny fixed this problem by not letting anyone see a final copy of their game (Enter the Matrix) until it was already on store shelves. After that happened, Eidos was unable to get away with the same thing with Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness in late July because people already knew their strategy and were cautious of the game's quality.

What's my point? That you can't release a crappy product (in any industry) and blame someone else when it isn't successful, especially if the same tactic has been tried before. Prevent it from being made and you won't have to worry.

To be honest, I think the idea of text mesages isn't that bad of an idea. Sure, you could call someone, but if they set their phone to vibrate and are in a movie theater or somewhere else where they can't talk on the phone, you can still communicate with them. If text messages are going to lead to less crap films, then I fully support their use!

 

[Richard_D_Ramirez]

This has to be a joke. There is no way the MPAA can enforce a ban like this.

8^B

 

[Rob Bartlett]

If text messages are going to lead to less crap films, then I fully support their use!

Yeah, but I don't exactly warm to the idea of 15 year-old girls having the msot influence

 

[Brian Lawrence]

That's too funny.

I guess the fact that movies open on twice as many screens as they did only a few years ago, has nothing to do with the fact that films now take a bigger dip in their 2nd week of release?

Not to mention the fact that films are now marketed with the strategy of making a killing in the first two weekends and then drifting off to dvd and video a mere 3 or 4 months later.

 

[Jason Seaver]

I guess the fact that movies open on twice as many screens as they did only a few years ago, has nothing to do with the fact that films now take a bigger dip in their 2nd week of release?

It's not just that, though - some bombs have actually died between Friday and Saturday. Word-of-mouth travels fast now, which can be pretty bad news if you've got a turkey on your hand.

The solution, of course, is fewer turkeys. But that's harder than it looks.

 

[Mark Schermerhorn]

Anything that reduces the impact of marketing and advertising is fine by me. Instead of the article heading using the word "texting" they should have used "ubiquitous communication" or something along those lines.

The MPAA knows better, although blaming a singular technology instead of examining the reality of current trends is something they and the riaa love to do. Lets run down the list: cell phones, email, "texting", internet forums, internet movie reviews, cable television. None of those mediums existed until relatively recently.

In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,

This is a really good quote. "Buying your market" is becoming increasingly difficult because consumers today have great channels of communication, this website being one of them. This same phenomena is happening in most industries where the customers are consumers. Advertising is taking a big hit in influence as people find better channels of information.

That being said, I wonder if this site has had to deal with industry reps posing as regular consumers, vouching for their own product.

 

[Ray Chuang]

Sheesh.

I think the MPAA should have realized this was coming when the commercialization of the Internet started in 1992. You don't even need SMS messaging to spread bad news about a movie--look at sites like RottenTomatoes.com and AintItCool.com both of which can kill a movie's prospects in a New York minute.

MalcolmR, you wrote:

They just need to stop making bad movies. Problem solved!

Ain't that the truth! Look at two of the biggest hits this summer: Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo (over US$320 million in revenues) and Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (over US$260 million in revenues). Both movies have done extremely well because of very good word of mouth from moviegoers themselves, and as a result both movies have done a tremendous amount of repeat business.

 

[John_Berger]

If I recall correctly, My Big Fat Greek Wedding got it's popularity (and huge amounts of revenue) almost 100% by word of mouth.

They just need to stop making bad movies. Problem solved!

Truer words were never spoken.

Make good movies and no one can pass along bad reviews. What an absolultely amazing concept!

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I don't know....if the Senate Judiciary Committee has the time to conduct investigations of the BCS on behalf of Tulane, surely they will have time to conduct investigations on text messages on behalf of the senators from MPAA/Disney/Warner

 

[WadeB]

Fast word of mouth may hurt some movies, but it can also help movies that don't get much of a marketing campaign and were made on a low budget. Bend it Like Beckham is a good example from this summer of how information technology, not marketing, helped a movie's box office. I agree that Nemo and Pirates were helped by good word of mouth, but they also have huge marketing machines behind them. All 3 are also widely regarded as good films, which helps quite a lot.

An example from the past, which got a lot of press at the time, was Blair Witch Project. Once the film took-off, I remember the media giving a lot of credit to the internet for making the movie a financial success.

Sounds like someone wants to have it both ways.