Archive for the ‘Film’ Category

“The Happening” didn’t happen

While checking out the online buzz around movies, I happended upon The Happening. This is another “epic” from Shyamalan. His great successes started with the Sixth Sense and was followed up with Unbreakable and The Village. He unfortunately is finding it hard to get the winning formula now. The Happening is universally panned, on IMDB there are one or two good critiques but there is now a planned walk out campaign in the USA and scorn heaped on the screenplay and cardboard acting.

Interestingly this movie is still bringing in great Box Office, Variety published that they brought in $40Million last week. That’s not bad for a “turkey”. It reminds me of The Simpsons which was a box office hit but of questionable quality (three episodes of The Simpsons smashed together said those in the know).

The conclusion for online buzz might be that if the studio owns a great franchise such as The Simpsons or access to a reputation like Shyamalan then a turkey (let’s call it a golden turkey) is OK so long as the movie gets mass released simultaneously, ideally globally. This is certainly what happened in the case of The Simpsons. The long term impact of that strategy is of course less clear, people can be fooled once but twice is more difficult, the franchise loses value and reputations damaged. However studio bosses are normally remunerated on the now so it unlikely they will fussy about quality if they know even a bad movie will bring in $80-$100Million. Below some simple high level scenarios.

Scenario A: studio has a great movie from an unknown franchise, they use online buzz to generate interest by early showings, select viewings, trailers and other ways to build up buzz. A critical mass of viewers goes to earliest “mass” releases and buzz both online and offline builds up and then we have good box office. This is something akin to the movie “Once” which became a word – of – mouth best seller. (Disclosure: I am Irish and I loved it).

Scenario B: studio has a great franchise or famous director, actor or producer. Clearly the movie is on the poor side “there were difficulties from the beginning”, “the movie I set out to make got hijacked” etc. The decision here is simple enough, kill it OR mass release straight away bring in the initial box office and ship to DVD 1 or 2 months quicker. At best do a global launch simultaneously and just acknowledge that the online buzz will be negative and will kill the movie quickly. E.g. The Happening

Scenario C: Great franchise, great movie would be a combination of release strategy of both A and B with significantly more speed (there is less risk of no buzz, after all there is a franchise). Push more early viewings, build up momentum with significant “viral” content released earlier and then mass release, enjoying the crescendo of buzz that will drive millions of people to the theatre. E.g. The Hulk

The Trendpedia chart below shows the buzz around The Happening and it is interesting to see the quick buzz from no-where and the quick decline. The absolute buzz is not that important compared to “The Hulk” or “Kung Fu Panda” what is more interesting is the fast decline. Still my view is that The Happening will get a spike in buzz over the next weeks but the buzz will not be flattering, walk out campaigns, cries of selling out, insulting viewers and disappointing fans, in this case a lot of buzz would not be a good thing…

Movie Magic

(Oscar) Prestige does not a profit make.

The Oscar wins came out at the end of February, and social media is still abuzz discussing (some of) the results. But how does this extra attention from the mysterious Academy translate into profits?

The Oscars aren’t the only awards in the modern market, and the movies that make it to the Oscar roster top the lists at several international film shows. Many are former independents, like Juno, that first reached audiences at what has become the draft lottery of future studio releases, the Sundance Film Festival. These are the award films, those moving pictures made to move the motivated audience. More and more, these are the films that make it to the ceremonies, the Pulitzers in the ever-expanding world of motion pictures.

What about the crowd-pleasers, the gems of popular genre? The Fool’s Gold of our modern cinematic landscape, movies made to sell dvds following a mediocre theater run. These (relatively) cheap and charming money-makers are the bread and butter of the movie industry. Then there are the action-filled spectacles-films designed to attract an audience to the big screen, as with the colourful and grimly vibrant (punny, aren’t I) Sweeney Todd.

Tracking movies online separates the one-hit-wonders and the fluff from the cult classics. Some movies are designed to sustain long term sales, not only of the film itself but the cultural icons, the books, scripts, the “making of”, photos, posters, T-shirts, newspapers, back-packs, pins, journals, re-packaged “special” dvds…These are the movies that today make an actor or a director a deity in the pop culture parthenon. Movies that make it into this category attract not just long-term attention, but permanent adulation.

And the film this year with top billing in the Buzz is…