[Infowarrior] - Hollywood scared of Twitter?

[Richard Forno]

Perhaps just another non-story about the "threat" of technology to  
decaying business models, but amusing anyway.  If Hollywood "risks"  
having tons of people learn very quickly that a movie sucks, which in  
turn leads to lower revenues per film, might they realize the error of  
their ways and start producting better movies? At least that's the  
logic ---- but then again, we all know how logic fares in certain  
industries.  :)

-rf


Twittering May Have Impact at Box Office
 From News Services
Thursday, August 20, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081904279.html?hpid=artsliving
Although word of mouth could always make or break a movie, it usually  
took days to affect the box office. But the rise of social networking  
tools such as Twitter might be narrowing that time frame to hours. And  
that has Hollywood on edge.

This summer, movies such as "Brüno" and "G.I. Joe" have had unexpected  
tumbles at the box office -- just within their opening weekends --  
while "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" survived blistering  
critical reaction to become a blockbuster.

Box-office watchers say the dramatic swings might be caused by Twitter  
and other social networking sites that can blast instant raves -- or  
pans -- to hundreds of people just minutes after the credits roll.

"Almost every time after I go out [to a movie], I'll tweet about it,"  
says Lindsay Wailes, a cook and barista from Westminster, Md. "I  
tweeted about 'G.I. Joe' as soon as I left the theater." Her take: "If  
you like science or plot, this isn't a movie for you; if you like  
explosions for no reason, you'll love it."

She also listens to what others have to say: She turned her back on  
"Brüno" because of downbeat Twitter reviews.

Studios are trying to gauge the impact of an avalanche of tweets and  
how it affects the staying power of a movie. Was the 39 percent box- 
office drop of "Brüno" from Friday to Saturday a case of disappointed  
moviegoers tweeting from theater lobbies? Or did a limited fan base  
for "Brüno" exhaust itself on that first day?

"I think Twitter can't be stopped," says Stephen Bruno, the Weinstein  
Co.'s senior director of marketing. "Now you have to see it as an  
addition to the campaign of any movie. People want real-time news, and  
suddenly a studio can give it to them in a first-person way."

Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, says studios are  
worrying about a time when "people will be Twittering during the  
opening credits -- and leaving when they don't like them." But he also  
warns, "The next step [for the Twitter Effect] is for studio marketing  
to manipulate it."

The Weinstein Co. has done that big-time for the Friday release of the  
Quentin Tarantino-Brad Pitt World War II epic "Inglourious Basterds."  
The company packed a screening at San Diego's Comic-Con with people  
who won access via Twitter. It also staged "the first ever Red Carpet  
Twitter meet-up" during the movie's premiere at Grauman's Chinese  
Theatre in Hollywood, generating celebrity tweets, including Sarah  
Silverman's "just made me smile forever" and Tony Hawk's "another  
Tarantino classic." Twitter has broadened the reach of bloggers and  
other aspiring opinionmakers.

"Just two years ago, if I saw a movie I loved or I hated, I'd be able  
to tell a dozen friends, tops," says John Singh, who works for the  
movie and social networking Web site Flixster. "Now I can be walking  
out of a theater as the credits are rolling and immediately tell 500  
people what I thought. . . . It's never been this easy to be this  
influential." Take "The Proposal," a film that had little buzz yet has  
become one of the summer's most profitable productions. (It cost $40  
million and is grossing upward of $159 million.) Flixster, which runs  
the movie application for iPhones, worked with Disney/Touchstone to  
promote the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic farce. Singh credits  
the campaign with increasing the film's opening-weekend haul by 30  
percent.

Positive reviews from her Twitter friends can persuade Wailes to  
attend a film if she's "undecided." If it "gets raves from people I  
network with, since I know I have something in common with these  
people, I figure there must be something in the movie that I might  
want to see."

Gregg Kilday, film editor of the Hollywood Reporter, notes that it's  
impossible to separate the factors that would explain a film's drop or  
rise in box office.

"Even if you don't have Twitter, a lot of people, especially kids,  
have long had the ability to text each other, sometimes from within  
the theater," he says. "And for a lot of the mass-market movies, the  
potential audience will go whether friends tell them they're good or  
not." Brandon Gray, president and founder of Boxofficemojo.com, notes  
that the hit teen-romance vampire film "Twilight" dropped 41 percent  
from Friday to Saturday without any discussion of the Twitter Effect.

"There have been many indications through the years that films  
targeting teens and young adults will have a huge Friday and a more  
front-loaded weekend," Gray says. "That's just kind of how it goes."  
Movietickets.com recently ran a poll in which 88 percent of the voting  
sample said Twitter had no effect on them. Joel Cohen, the company's  
executive vice president and general manager, thinks "we may be  
putting too much weight onto the Twitter Effect. But you can see  
Twitter's benefits as a communications tool that spreads the word  
about a film, and the negatives have yet to be proven." Bowles, who  
distributed the documentary "Food, Inc.," acknowledges that "we did  
some Twitter-specific things, including a Twitter-cast with the  
movie's director, Robby Kenner." But he's cautious when it comes to  
describing Twitter as a "revolutionary" force.

"Revolutionize moviegoing? No," he said. "But all the tiny little bits  
together [Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and others] can add up to  
something meaningful."