Slashdot Mirror
Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office
cybercuzco writes "The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks. Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image. Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future."
This article made me laugh more then Mario Cantone on the Denis Leary
roast. Who thinks this stuff? Colin Quinn should get this writer on the
payroll for tough crowd.
"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of." - Burt Bacharach
obviously reviews and the fact that a new 200 million dollar movie opened each weekend had nothing to do with it?
Mike
I'm sure it will be banned, any day now, yep, right around the corner...
So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
So, earning $131,164,155 in the United States alone and breaking sales records is considered poor sales? Incredible. =)
Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal - Film at 11
Governments are not necessary.
WTF??!
Where's the foot icon?
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard...
Whoa!
Surely if the movie wasn't crap, people wouldn't send text messages saying it was.
The solution is to create good movies.
Hmm
.sigs are for losers
Charlies Angels was the hottest thing on earth.
God forbid they simply not make movies that suck.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
gigli sucked!
Remember when companies were complaining about benchmarks, and their image?
So I'm guessing this means they don't want us messaging anyone to say a movie was good too?
I didn't get texted on this. I saw the preview for The Hulk, decided it was probably going to suck, never bothered to watch it. Found out a few weeks after it was out that it sucked (through word of mouth, not text messaging).
I could be like the MPAA, blame everyone but myself when something bad happens. I'll start by blaming communists, woman, minorities, foreigners, my parents, teachers, politicians... and everyone else, but me. It's a good thing I'm perfect!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Coke retroactively blames the touch-tone phone for poor sales of the New Coke.
Who needs Gigli when you have the abortion that is Battlefield Earth? THE MAN CREATURE IS HUNGRY. GET THE HUNGERFOOD FROM THE CARRYPACK.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
i blame the rumors of my bad body oder for my lack of ability to get a date
I hear the movie industry is collaborating with SCO to claim they own the code the messaging companies are using on their servers. . so this should all blow over soon. . .
They complain about how technology makes it harder for them to fool customers? Kind of reminds me of RIAA, they're just as stuck in the past as this Miramax guy.
The next great MMORPG.
Here, eat some of this shit. Don't tell anyone that it tastes like... well, shit. Our business model, you ask? As follows:
- Produce crap.
- Hope enough suckers buy it before it's categorized as crap.
- Profit!!!
Yes, I think we just figured out step #2. Impressive!This is just pathetic. I think it's even worse than the telephone marketers complaining about how they're livelyhood is gone because they can't piss people off whenever they want to.
Oh yeah, this "industry" is going down the drain faster than I thought. I hope it dies a fast, painful death, along with the music "industry".
I guess they'll just have to start making movies that don't suck.
Um... anybody remember how to do that?
So, text-messaging allows people to spread the word about a bad movie too fast?
As opposed to, oh, checking the Tomatometer at or before the day of release? Or reading reviews you trust? Or just making a _phone call_ to your friends instead of texting them?
Text messaging is an incremental improvement in our communications ability, not a revolution.
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.
.co.uk site so I assume they are talking about Europe?) I guess that instant messenger (a massive communication medium for most people under the age of 26) is having something to do with it (and I guess the ability of AOL's AIM to forward those messages straight to your cell phone (thank the lord for free inbound SMS)). So while mass communication is FASTER these days (24/7 Internet connections, AIM, etc), I doubt that it has any bearing on the movie industry. Would it account for GOOD MOVIES doing better as well? "HEY THIS movE ROX"
.02
I suppose this has SOME bearing on the spread of word of mouth, but I can certainly guarantee that here in the US that text messaging is not as prevelant is the cell phone companies would like (this article is from a
The movies this summer sucked, bad. Gigli, the Hulk (which wasn't terrible), Terminator 3 (again, not terrible), American Wedding, etc, are all going to be dwarfed by such fine examples such as My Boss's Daughter, the Medallion, etc.
I suppose that they have to blame it on something. Mass marketing full of smoke and mirrors can't save bullshit. Let's cut out the teen-heart-throb actors/actresses (My Boss's Daughter) and get back to plot, script, and real entertainment.
Just my worthless
Pretty soon the MPAA will be limiting out ability to speak. :)
Give me a break, text messaging is causing movies to do well? Maybe they need to just face the facts that the movies they produced were crap. Well just my two cents.
Andy S.
MPAA/RIAA/M$ Okay next on list Subpoena mobile carries get the address of SMS senders and send Legal crap to the great great great grandparents of these users. That ought to get them scared.
Its called word of mouth, and has been about since theatre was invented. Texts probably spread slower than people talking to each other, because it costs so much to send bulk messages to your 20 "closest friends" if you are on a pre-pay package (as most teenagers in the UK are).
The MPAA should skip over a ban on text messaging and simply ban the formation of negative opinions of their movies. Problem solved. Next time you go to the movies, just be sure you shave your head ahead of time so it's easier for the MPAA probe team to screen your thoughts.
This sounds really great! I mean, just think, if the MPAA tells us that a movie doesn't suck and that we can't tell our friends that a movie sucks, all the movies in the future must be good, right? Or perhaps, they'll claim that texting is in violation of the "please turn of the cell phone" clauses in theaters. Hmm... sounds great to me!
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Today, text messaging. Tomorrow, movie review places. The future: Saying anything bad about a movie gets you live in prison!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
When will those pesky consumers learn to sit still and mindlessly consume the inane drivel we're putting out?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
From now on when you go to a movie you'll have to sign a slip saying you won't say anything bad about it.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Perhaps movie companies will FINALLY be forced into making BETTER movies (IE ones that people will want to see).
So they don't want us to tell others what we think about a movie we've seen?
What are they, insane?
I guess that isn't news...
The unofficial
I'd bet that they have the market research to back this up, (if there's one thing that Hollywood doesn't fool around with, it's market research on their targeted demographics) so I would tend to believe the industry on this one.
Of course, this has nothing to do with texting, it's more about instant communication, which they can't do anything about. I suppose they could pressure theaters to disallow cell phones on some other grounds (people can't learn to turn them off during shows. That's a legitimate complaint - they really can't).
This reminds me of the music industry though. What they say in the article is that companies are used to being able to "buy their gross" and avoid negative word of mouth. That, in a way, is a business model. And just as the music industry will have to change their business model to succeed in the face of music sharing (REGARDLESS of whether or not they are able to contain it) so too will the movie industry have to make some changes.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Hello. I am very fat. You too can save money on eBay.
Quick, someone setup a BitTorrent so we can download all the text message reviews since they will be illegal soon.
According to this article their entire livelihood banks on paying enough money so that they can sucker people in before they read about how much the movie sucks. That seems almost criminal.
I don't remember telling anyone, by texting or by any other way, that the great movie I saw sucked, don't bother seeing it. Now if the film sucked....
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
think the MPAA deserves a punch in its tiny little balls.
"By accepting the terms of this license to watch the following movie, you agree to not say anything bad about the movie. If you cannot accept the terms of this license, please leave the theater now and ask for (but don't expect to receive) a full refund of your ticket price."
First the music industry decides to sell us justin timberlake dogshit, the economy goes sour and their sales go down and they sue us. Then the movie industry decides lesbian jennifer lopez mafia hitwoman movies with ben affleck are what the people want, the economy goes sour and their sales go down... can we expect any less from jack valenti?
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The horror! Quick! Ban people from spreading the word!
Once the MPAA bans texting, they'll ban cell phones outright. Then they'll have to ban mouths.
This move will be followed by banning Ears and Eyes, so you won't be able to experience how bad the movie is and will be willing to go back to not experience it a second or third time.
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
Looks like, someone responsible for investigating the bad summer took a shortcut.
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
I know the big media organizations have a justifiably bad rap amond slashdotter, but how does the story submitter imagine that MPAA could ban text messaging? Perhaps a kind letter would do it.
"Dear Telecom Equipment Manufacturer:
Your products' ability to 'text message' is interfering with our cynical behavior of 'buying our gross' -- that is, putting out an ad blitz to compensate for what we know to be an inferior product. Please disable text messaging so that both products can be inferior. Then: ????, Profit!
Sincerely,
The MPAA."
any members of the MPAA actually sat through Gigli.. I'm sure they'd retract their statements.. (or they'd text one another going.. 'eeps.. wtf were we thinking?')
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
So this is a bad thing?
Seems that this might encourage studios to stop making crap.
Of course, judging by the kind of garbage that does well these days, there's probably no hope.
*sigh*
at least there are foreign films.
---
RIDICULOUS. IT'S SPELLED RIDICULOUS, YOU IDIOT
...don't go giving them any ideas.
Just blame it all on SCO.
Hooray for instant feedback. It's been generally considered that sucky movies did well because the average person has no taste in movies. Now maybe, just maybe, they'll discover it's just because the average person can't see beyond the hype. Consequently, maybe the sudios will try to make films to do well because of their own merits rather than because of the instant influx of hype they can generate.
And yeah, blah blah head in the sand, blah blah fight the symptom not the disease, but that only goes on for so long. Paradigm shifts are always like that, and ignoring reality can only go on so long. And I mean that in the Thoman Kuhn, Structure of the Scientific Revolution meaning, not the bastardized business meaning.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
...set you free? Hardly!
With the guy who told the people that their privacy was in danger because of an unfixed bug in their email services, the "truth" did damage to the company and we can't have exposure for bugs, flaws and defects... oh no... that's just anti-american!
I wonder who will be the first person to be prosecuted for giving a movie a bad review? After all, they are responsible for the tremendous losses that the MPAA are suffering. It's not ONLY the digital piracy on the internet, but now people are spreading the truth (or opinions) around faster than can be controlled!!!
What ever happened to the idea of building a better mouse-trap?
Obviously, if they spent enough money on marketing, people should like it right? I mean, thats what marketing IS. If marketing doesnt work, they'd have to rely on *gasp* _content_?!! Burn those infernal networks of informed consumers.
"Sorry Im not more user-friendly."
I sure hope you were joking because if you weren't you are an absolute fool, and so is anyone who thinks this might happen. This is obviously free speech and will be protected as such as long as the First Amendment is around. And to preempt the 43 l33t posts shouting "BUT THE DMCA", be aware that the judge in the case ruled that code has a functioning capability that makes it different from normal speech and so it won't always be protected. Obviously this is nothing like that, so you don't have to worry.
Of course, this will do nothing to prevent the onslaught of uninformed Slashdotters thinking that free speech "is a thing of the past" by coming up with all sorts of idiotic examples.
Yeah, go ahead and mod me down.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
The ANTIAMEN bill past resently outlaws all "Word of Mouth" and "Opinion" against the MPAA with members in TV, Radio, Movie, and Music. The new bill will also remove the "Freedom of Speach" from the constitution since it was found UN-constitutional.
Ave Molech Setting
If the MPAA can blame the text messaging for failed movies (and not on any other factor) I guess someone can apply the same logic and say that the movies which were hits and did well on the box office did so due to the same reason, i.e. text messaging by teenagers to others telling what a good movie it is. but oh well, I guess MPAA and logic, now thats a bit too much to expect, not!!
English teachers all across the country blamed the dismantling of the English language on people who use "text" as a verb.
If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what will. Pretty much, Sands is saying that enough people will buy his product before the general public realizes his product is useless to break even.
What a *great* business plan.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
I check a movies rating in www.imdb.com before i go to see it. It is generally reliable. (Anything over 7.0/10.0 is worth watching)
But, of late, I see that new movies open with high ratings at IMBD. Are the movie makers manipulating numbers to influence people like me?
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
...from the API wire: "Anomyous studio executives confirmed today that an agreement had been reached with Lockheed-Martin on a new, space-based, wireless messaging jammer. Sure, it'll cost us $100M to deploy, but it it lets us finally start making money on turds like Glitter and Gigli, well, it'll be a very profitable investment".
Hollywood studios don't make movies hoping that people will like them and tell all their friends and then their friends will see it and tell their friends and so on anymore. It used to be that a movie was successful when it stayed in theatres forever and built up a good box office take that way.
,the movie can fade into oblivion and the hollywood execs are too busy counting their money to care.
These days, Hollywood puts out pure garbage, and hypes the hell out of it, hoping everyone will be so hyped up about it they'll want to see it immediately after it's released. They count on the fact that people who go and see it won't be able to tell that many people it sucks until the opening weekend is already past, and they've raked in their millions, generated purely from marketing. After the multi-million dollar opening weekend
Here's an idea: maybe Hollywood could start making movies people actually want to see more than once, and make their movie that way.
However, I would imagine that hollywood is by and large safe because the majority of people do not have cell phones that support "text-messaging".
What we would really have to watch out for is if some technological renegade could come up with some way that "text messaging" messages could be encoded into normal speech, allowing people without even cell phones to "text mssage" each other warnings about bad movies simply by coming within a close physical radius. If that happens, Hollywood is doomed.
Although I am a bit perplexed. They suggest people did not go to see Gigli because these "text messages" warned them it was a bad movie. However, I do not have a "text message" capable cell-phone, yet I knew Gigli was a bad movie anyway, becuase all the media outlets I follow had been consistently running stories for two weeks before Gigli was released warning me that it was going to be a bad movie. Perhaps this "text messaging" of which they speak has somehow hijacked cnn.com and nyt.com, causing "text messages" warning of bad movies to masquerade as normal news? Wouldn't that be illegal? Hmm.
Clearly there is much to think about here.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm not going to go to watch a stupid movie when it costs $20 without food/drinks for me and my woman ($35 if you get 2 tickets, 2 drinks, and a box of popcorn in NYC)
I'm not going to buy a cd when it costs $15+ for a cd of 8 tracks, 6 of which suck
I'm not going to listen to the radio since all of the radio stations I get are the same 30 songs in rotation, some at the same time
You know what I'm going to do? Pick up a book and go to the park. At least the view is nice (still warm enough for women in skimpy clothes) and there are still decent books to be read
I'm all fucking for it. If you pay $10 to see a movie you should not be yapping on or typing on your cellphone; you should be quiet and watch the damn movie. Let them complain about you ragging on the movie AFTER you leave the theater. I really want to hear them complain about that, as that would be funnier.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The studios are relying on the fact that they'll get at least good sales on opening night even for a bad movie, as long as the marketing campaign makes it look good. Instead, the first viewers are warning their friends on Thursday and Friday nights "naw, go see something else, Gigli stinks." The Thursday/Friday night opening night crowds used to be a captive market.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press? And that the whole thing just cancels out (well, it would if there were as many surprise good movies as there are expensive bad movies).
Grassroots word of mouth is without a doubt the best marketing tool any product can have. If the word of mouth is against you, it's because you don't have good product.
Well first of all The Hulk was very good. And second of all, if I won't text my friends that a movie sucks, I'll e-mail them, call them, or *GASP* tell them when I meet them.
Word of mouth spreads a LOT faster than it used to. It means that the movie has to actually be good and/or at least properly entertaining to make it up to the $200-250 million range, which is how it *should* be.
Basically, if you properly market a good movie then it's not going to tank... and good riddence to the practice of pumping up mediocrity with a ton of marketing to get first weekend gross w/o legs.
D00D1! did u c that MooV Giggly? Bytz A77! CU 2nite for more chat. A/S/L?
Isn't there an Amendment to some document somewhere that guarantees our rights to this, before and over-and-above anything a Corporation or Government entity thinks?
Too damned bad for the MPAA. Maybe the public has finally found the "killer-app" that will stop the flood of garbage coming out of the industry.
("Freddy vs. Jason"? For fuck's sake...)
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Make better movies. Your movies suck. Face it.
Get better actors, they all suck too.
You try to cover up the fact that the plot sucks ass and the actors are retard droolers by overloading the senses with loud ass music, shit blowing up and other gee-whiz special effects.
You are hoping that no one will notice the fact that the entire movie sucks.
I DARE you to make a movie without loud music and ANY special effects of any kind, CGI or old school. You won't because you can't.
You can't produce a movie that will stand on the fact that the plot is good and the actors are good because those days are gone.
Hollywood is washed up. Fold up and go home, we don't want your crappy movies any more.
Wow, if hand-held text-message devices are so incredibly powerful, just think what a hand-held voice-message device could be capable of! Quick - get me a patent application form!
In fact, perhaps this is why he's really running for governor -- because he has seen the future and knows Terminator 4 receipts are going to hurt.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
...rapid communication in general that has been improved/enabled by our new fangled networks.
:P) They will have links to dozens of reviews before a movie is even released.
Like, an example is http://www.rottentomatoes.com. (No, not affiliated,
When 40 out of 40 reviewers all say 'Gigli' is an abhorrent, unoriginal, poorly written, disastrous mess, I'm sure not shelling out moolah for a theatre ticket.
In "the old days" you'd maybe read a single review in a newspaper, which wasn't nearly as disuading as a whole battalion of naysayers all lined up.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
If the MPAA had their way..
er, 'The obvious answer is a tax on IM's and cell-based text messaging. Because it would be impossible to tell which users abuse the technology to spread negativity and damage the expensive-to-craft images of these movies, the most democratic thing to do is to tax all IM/text users. The fee would be small -- fractions of a penny per message -- adding up to a few hundred dollars per year. Such a fee would help compensate artists and theater owners for the loss incurred.'
(Then again, they might really listen to me...)
"On advice from SCO legal counsel..."
and
"...and claims that touch tones infringe on it's intellectual property, citing suspicious similarities between the tones heard when pressing buttons on the phones, and the sound the tab on a Coke can makes when plucked"
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
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.
this is absolute bull. Gigli was receiving horrible reviews months before release. Online, on television, in various newspapers. The week before the movie was released I don't know how many articles I saw regarding how bad this movie was. I knew it contained such gems as "it's turkey time. gobble gobble" at least a week before it was released.
IM influences the 1 other person on the other end of the line. A bad review in the news media is there for the entire world to read.
Realizing that free speech, although constitutionally guaranteed can pose a risk to marketing campaigns, propaganga, and other outright lies. The MPAA has already began buying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H talking with various senators and congressmen to reach a solution to this so-called "first amendment" clause which seems to be causing the MPAA so much grief lately.
... of how the Internet and the way that it connects people together is causing big changes in our culture both at a national level and globally.
I'm not saying that IM is solely responsible for the "lackluster" showing of movies, like the article insinuates.
When I think about it, the Internet really has changed my way of life. Of course I was always into the online scene (I frequented Quantum Link on my C64 back in the day, and enjoyed the online communities on BBS systems.) With the Internet I'm even more plugged-in. I can't remember the last time I send an actual paper letter via postal mail. I hardly watch TV news anymore; I get my news on the 'net.
The Internet really has been and will continue to be a driving force behind cultural changes. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can either hop on and enjoy the ride, or fall behind the times.
If a tree fell on a florist, and nobody was around to hear it, would he make a noise?
In other news mobile carriers thanked the movie industry.
that these corporate entities bow down to.
The hand of capitalism has decreed that movies that suck will not make money.
And the solution? Ban capitalism. No, seriously, make movies that don't suck.
An innovative and creative exercise for those in Hollywood these days.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
So they admit that their product stinks, but through the use of "carefully crafted" marketing they can make people think junk = treasure. But that plan only worked as long as they could keep word of mouth from spreading too quickly. In other words, they don't like reality, but prefer their crafted message designed to fool people into seeing garbage.
And it would have worked too if it hand't been for you meddlin' kids!
No, the boy bands aren't beginning to fail because they are created not by people who simply love music, but created to fit a specific formula to have mass appeal with lyrics that mean nothing.
Or the media singing creations like Britney and Christine are suffering a backlash and lower CD sales because their listeners are beginning to recognize them not as artists, but as glammed up beauty queens made to appeal to the most common denominator.
Movies aren't failing because they have canned stories that can be anticipated by a 5 year old, from the "Ultra-pretty female scientist who never picks up a bunson burner" to the "totally evil corporate guy that you cheer when he dies though you know it's coming the first time he does something so impossibly stupidly evil you know he wouldn't last 5 minutes in the real business world".
No, it's not because more people - not all, and in some cases, not enough - are beginning to tell their friends "Hey - you know [Insert Movie Here]? It's not that great. Yeah, don't see it." because the movie really isn't that great - it must be because they're bypassing the marketing system that is meant to polish shit and sell it as gold.
I'm really not too concerned, because in the end, "money talks and bullshit walks". The now gone Filthy Critic may have been a foul mouth bastard - but he was usually pretty spot on about calling a turd a turd, and giving praise when it was deserved. Compared to many "movie critics" who sound like paid whores (or, in the infamous Sony case, are totally made up to give bad movies a good name **cough**Freddy Got Fingered**cough**.
Word of mouth of viewers is becoming more powerful all the time. Look how low budget movies like "Bend it like Beckham" are doing better than expected thanks to word of mouth (which I actually thought was pretty good - though I can't figure out why all the ads feature the white girl Jules as the main attraction when she's not the main character).
If we're lucky, movie studios will realize that it makes more money to make a really good movie that people will want to talk about and recommend to their friends - than have sloppy, lazy writing that doesn't really entertain - it just numbs.
Eh - but that's my own take on recent movies. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
There are 3 aspects of a profitable movie, in order of precedence:
- Marketing the movie.
- Making the deal.
- Making the movie.
This is nothing new. It's been this way since movies were commercially viable. I'm sure the same held (and holds) true to movies' predecessors, plays, operas, symphonies, etc.
><));>
If you'll read the article, you'll see that people are texting *from inside the theater* while the movie is playing.
So this should be read as spectacular news! Texting may be the solution to idiots with cell phones in the theater!
The question remains, if you text "FIRE" in a crowded theater, is that free speech?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
I'm not even going to bother R'ing-TFA. The entertainment industry will always look for a scapegoat. What's next? They'll blame movie theaters for selling extra large sodas. They'll say the moviegoers bladders are too full and when they have to go pee, they miss too much of the movie. Therefore it's unfair that they sai Gili is bad because they missed some of the movie going to the bathroom. Give me a break.
----
Spam subject of the moment: Offshore account secrets -nashville disrupt
That article didn't seem to be blaming texting, just sort of explaining things. It's true. In the past a huge marketing campaign could help a shitty summer blockbuster do fairly well initially, and only gradually drop of in profit in subsequent weeks. However I think that using texting as the only explanation is pretty lame. How about the increase in the accessability of information? Instead of having to wait for the 5 or 11 o'clock news, you can get movie reviews from a whole slew of critics of both the traditional (Roger Ebert) and fanboy (Harry Knowles) variety from the comfort of your PC. Also, channels like CNN routinely repeat capsulated reviews. So yes, the word gets out on whether or not a movie sucks much quicker these days than just a few years ago. Hey, at least they didn't blame piracy.
---
Take it sleazy,
-The Shockmaster
Unfortunately, its crap. There aren't enough teen-age text messagers in the US to kill a box office like that. I guess they are going to have to look for another villan
They would do well to start by looking in a mirror. The movies they are pushing right now are unwatchable glub.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
They never give credit where credit is due, but blame is freely distributed to any but the motion picture companies.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Hey! I thought it was pirate dvds in Chinatown that was causing the poor box office!
Hey! I thought it was poor sales of the related-videogame that was causing the poor box office!
Hey! I thought it was movie file-trading over Kazaa that was causing the poor box office!
It's good that the mpaa feels the need to blame consumers for not being willing to tolerate their crap. Why is it the duty of the consumer to pay for movies that are low quality. They need to get their heads out of their asses and start producing something people will actually want to pay for. In the supposed capitalist economy of the US, bad products and services should die a horrible death. The MPAA can't stop that from happening just by blaming technology.
What does it matter? Trinity dies at the end of the movie anyway.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Although, the entire article itself seems to lend itself as a troll, would you not agree Slashdot?
Blair Witch project
.. it makes me want to cackle madly and throw a spoon against the wall. A.) If the movie didn't "stink" then why would people text others to tell them that it does? By making this claim they almost admit that the movies do suck a fat one. and B.) Why is this any different than calling on the phone or telling someone in person that the movie "stinks"? Bottom line, if the movie doesn't "stink" then what difference does it make? What if the movie was really good and people wanted to text their friends to tell them how good it is? Should we credit good movie ticket sales to people who text others to tell them it's a good movie? If we follow this line of logic then we must.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
"By watching this movie, you agree ... 7) to not discuss it with others."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Two words: F...IN MORONS!
... ( very atrocious act ) ... his ass.
In other news, the movie industry blames people for not being influenced by lame brain washing 'marketing' technics anymore. They report that their latest profit maximization technics have been unsuccessful because of their targetted audience's inherent ability to judge a movie by its content.
This is ridiculous, outrageous, and personally, if I hear anyone arguing in favor of that argument near my place, i'm going to
Someday, the word 'American' is going to replace the word 'Moron' in the Webster for real. People, please make sure this doesn't happen. ( Castrate the idiots living in Hollywood )
Next we will see shrink wrap licensing on the tickets. "By watching this movie, you agree not to talk trash about the movie for at least long enough for us to break even...
walking out of the theater yelling "GIGLI SUCED BALLS"???
That would seem to be an effective way of disrupting the carefully planned marketing.
100% Insightful
What's that, people being informed about the product they are about to buy(movie ticket), now we can't have that. We demand do be able trick people into buying something else than they expect!
...maybe the MPAA can use the EPIC homeless tracking software to find audiences for stinkers like Gigli.
The American movie industry deserves a good kick in the ass anyway! Makes you wonder if there is so much extra cash out there that they need real big tax write offs again with movies like the HULK happening. As J Leno said "If the hype makes it looks like it will be a Block Buster then thats were you will find it next week!"
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Now, literally.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
1. Hype the piss out of a movie
2. Everyone goes to see it, due to hype
3. People hate it, but others see it BEFORE it can be categorized as crap by Word-Of-Mouth
4. ???
5. Profit!
I love the fact they know it's crap, but hype it and bank upon the fact people take a while to have the movie labeled as shit. "Oh no!" they say, "Now they can categorize it faster! What will we do?!"
"Make good movies?! No! We'll blame those damn texting teens!"
I'm on the RIAA's side on this one. Today its text messaging, and tomorrow, who knows, people may be communicating on a futuristic device where they actually can hear other persons voice IN REALTIME, and sooner a new technology will emerge which allows people to talk to one another WITHOUT THE USE OF ANY EXTERNAL ELECTRONIC DEVICE WHATSOEVER!!! Then just imagine, if you will, if there were a network of "movie critics" posting reviews all over the internet. Imagine if people KNEW HOW BAD THE MOVIE WAS BEFORE THEY EVEN SAW IT? Who would see see the movies!!! NOBODY!!! We would ALL LOOSE OUR JOBS!!!
Hey "Gigli" wasn't a total loss, it added "It's turkey time" to the lexicon!
I refuse to pity any filmmaker whose movie fails to hold a person's attention enough so that they don't fire off an IM during the movie.
First the tracking of the homeless, then this about users commenting on movies... well.. I'm having a hard time to imagine this can be true!!
It's so incredible stupid, it can't be true....
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
Now go back and look at your link they are barely over the production budget, this means a big loss.
Got Code?
.....bad movie reviews
.....the New York Times
.....movie websites
What brings so much humour into my life is how these "industry groups" seem to be like little 5 year olds - willing to talk about everything but the truth and adamantly sticking to their POVs. Music sales aren't down because of Kazaa - it's cuz I wanna buy the Matrix DVD instead of spending 15$ on a CD with two good songs.
I love their business model, though. Make crappy stuff and then blame everything but it's crappiness for the fact that it doesn't sell. Then sue everyone because they won't buy a crappy product.
Who thinks these things up?!
I, for one, welcome our new MPAA overlords.
Uh, umm....nevermind....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
They're bitching that the carefully crafted marketing image is being undermined. Big difference.
The fact that the crapness of their movie is undermining the marketing image is a different issue!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The movie industry isn't trying to take away the right to text message, they're just crying about it.
Let 'em cry.
btw, I thought it was common courtesy to turn off your phone during the movie. Is this article saying that people are actually breaking that rule? j/k, but I'd love to see mega movie dollars being pumped into a "turn of your cell phone, it's rude" campaign now.
-n-
Is this is the case, then that would put the Fox network in an interesting predicament. They have been encouraging text message through American Idol, and the host of that is now on commercials for some cell phone provider or another involving text messages as well. Then we might have the kind of internal battle of that sony has been facing over file sharing.
Transcript of a real movie knockdown:
:^( <this movie suks roks>
WRU? <where are you?>
@ da Mov E
WAUS <what are you seeing>
CA:FT <Charlies Angels: Full Throttle>
HII? <how is it?>
TMSR!
JoeR <me>
Oh yeah I get it now, the kiddies are using Human Assembly Language, and the Suits hate it. Besides, I may be old, but isn't it more fun to talk to friends via voice???
But I have the capability on my watch too. Can I wear my watch in the theater? What about 2-way pagers? I agree that folks who talk in movies on cell phones should be hit with a taser... there has to be a better way. hey! What about makinga a movie you won't want to miss any of the action or dialoge?
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
The motion picture industry has already proven itself adept at buying laws that curb fair use. I think it unwise to underestimate said industry's mindset - they could attempt to buy laws that would, say, make text messaging impractical, either by placing a heavy tarriff on it to render it impractical, or simply having it banned outright.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Strike "Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal", I have another suggestion:
Slander/Libel law broadened to include "negative and harmful" speech towards economic activity.
I personally know a guy who was successfully sued for posting a negative opinion of one company's products in a forum devoted to discussion of products in a particular hobby area. (In his case, outdoor water gardens)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Personally, I just watch the Tonight Show. Jay: "So, how many people have seen the new movie Gigli?" Sound of exactly ONE person in audience clapping. Everbody laughs... sure removed any doubt that I didn't want to see the movie!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
+hi5 5+0ry 8L0wz!!! L0L
L3z 60 +0 teh f41R, 4nD p1cK uP 50m3 H0n3zz
L4+3Rzz,
5hizz13 m4h n1zz13!!
Hulk etait tellement a chier, qu'ils ont prevu une suite; et d'ailleurs ils sont deja en train de la tourner. Mais le plus terrible, c'est qu'il s'est passe un truc diiingue sur le tournage.
..."
Y'a Spiderman qui va voir Hulk, et il lui dit, "putain, hulk, tu deconnes, on commence le tournage dans 5 minutes, et t'as ta chemise qu'est toute dechiree."
Alors la, y'a Hulk qui regarde, et qui dit, "oh putain, j'suis vert
Hard to point the finger at yourself, isn't it Motion Picture Industry?
Well, check the website you link to. Production costs alone were $120 million. Add to that tens of millions in marketing costs and the movie is still in the red. Also, your site says that it brought in $62 million dollars the first weekend, which means it dropped very quickly after that. It is quite possible that bad word-of-mouth during and after the first weekend helped to kill the profits of that movie. Not so incredible!
I think the parent poster "got it", but I'm seeing way too many comments to this story that don't.
From the story:
Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future.
From the F'ing A:
[crickets chirping]
In case there's any question, allow me to spell it out: the last sentence of the Slashdot story is supposed to be funny. As in "how silly, next they'll be banning texting. ha ha ha!"
On the other hand, we *could* be paranoid and say that the real reason theaters want to install cell-phone jammers is to prevent teenyboppers from telling their friends how bad "Jiggly" J.Lo sucked. But that would be as silly as the Secret Service tracking the homeless.
Oh, bad example. Sorry.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You just summed it all up neatly.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
The article being linked to is simply a few bits from a LA Times story which has much more information. The LA Times article has a number of quotes from movie executives that show they realize that word of mouth is key and that they wish to make movies that get good reviews from the initial fans. It does not indicate that the movie companies want to gag anyone - just figure out how to appeal to the initial viewers. In any case bad movies always get a negative word of mouth and good movies hopefully get a good word of movie - improved communications merely helps speeds this up.
Apparently the movie industry doesn't think to highly of its movie-going customers. They imply we're both dumb enough that we'll be entertained by just about anything they can cram down our throats and that we'll somehow *forget* how bad a movie was once we've left the theater.
Bad news kiddies, expect to have your ears caulked, your eyes gouged out, your tongue torn out and your hands chopped off on your next visit.
8==8 Bones 8==8
The MPAA and RIAA are reporting low sales. They say that people talk about how things suck and make them do poorly in sales. "We will actively be gagging people as they leave the theater" said the MPAA spokesperson.
Good freakin' googly? When will people start taking responsibility for their actions? This is absolutely nuts. So TEXT is killing it? I never thought of telling someone a movie sucked.
Wait...maybe we can use this to OUR advantage. We can say we're only getting bad movies now because Hollywood stopped trying to make good ones since we now text people.
I think I'll start banging my head against the wall and blame Home Depot for not telling me that's a bad idea.
And smash my schlong under the toilet seat repeatedly in Wendy's and blame them for not warning me.
Hmmm...I'm looking at my stapler here...no "do not staple your eyeballs shut" warning...hold on a minute.
Of course we have the "music sales are down because MP3s"...it must be. The new music ROCKS!
Ok...I'm done. But I would like some feedback. Please tell me I'm not the only one thinking like this.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
One would expect a successfull high-payed movie producer would be able to make the link between "bad movies" and "no audience", yet they didn't. They made ever possible link between something random and "no audience".
My guess they're still in the "denial"-phase and one day they might see the link and change jobs.
complains that the pigs can talk!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Do some guerilla marketing.
.VOILA!
How? I hear you ask. Well if texting bad reviews has the power to kill a carefully crafted marketing plan maybe texting can be incorporated into your fiendish scheme to filch money from the pockets of the "consumer."
Here's what you do. Instead of spending time and money carefully crafting a marketing plan carefully craft a movie.
Then people will text each other how great it is and. .
It's a devilishly fiendish scheme, I know, but it'll work and the bottom end justifies the means, no?
KFG
Does the MPAA _need_ any more proof that they _absolutely_ must make better movies? Doesn't this sound like some idiot is behind the MPAA?? Does anyone else think this is completely rediculous? C'mon movie makers! Get your head out of your butt! If you made better movies, people wouldn't be sending those text messages! Holy fsck, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out!
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Why would this be any more detrimental to a movie than the patron calling all his/her freinds after the movie and telling them it sux? Besides maybe the few freinds that are allready on their way to the theater; but cell phones take care of that demographic. I mean seriously, this guy is just looking for excuses to give validation to their shrinking bottom line. Look for another job, you blew it sir.
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Frankly if you were sitting next to me at the theater, I'd want you to sit still and quit playing with your watch (which hopefully doesn't beep every time you touch it). When you get out of the movie, by all means, tell everyone how fucking horrible it was. But sit still and stay quiet during the movie, especially if you're sitting next to me.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
After the advertising blitz before Spiderman helped send it to super blockbuster status, the movie execs thought they had a formula to make any movie into a super mega hit, at least for 1 weekend. After all, movie execs are investing a chunk of change into these movies, they want to be able to predict and control the behavior of the masses accurately, at least in the short term. What they didn't figure into their calculation was the Spiderman was, thanks to Sam Rami, a pretty good movie.
New communications technology is giving people greater power, and that is scaring the pants off those who use to be able to spoon feed us information and entertainment. I say, let's watch them squirm and laugh.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Guess you didn't look in the right place google returns 7,330 hits :-(
Please mod the original article down -2 for trolling and flamebait. :-)
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
By any other name wouldst smell as vile.
(with apologies to Wm. Shakespeare, or whomever actually wrote it)
The MPAA is bemoaning the fact that modern technology is letting moviegoers find out that a new movie is crap many times faster than they were able to in the past. So what they are complaining about is that they're unable to hoover the money from as many people who will be unhappy at the amount of money they had to cough up to watch a bad movie before the public wises up and stays away in droves. But is this going to motivate the production houses to produce fewer big-budget flops and more good movies? It is to laugh.
I just got back from a special screening of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and I just want to let you know it stinks! Shelbob there was TOTALLY CG! Not even a real puppet! This movie is going to bomb a the box office, I'd expect 300million ALONE in the US. It's all these stinking people saying movies are bad!
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Of course, a simple non-disclosure agreement on the back of each ticket will thwart those who dare bad-mouth any movie. Just patent the plot and claim copyright over any description of the story.
Texting people after the movie is pretty ingenious. All this time I thought gauging how bad a movie sucked based on how many commercials you saw of the movie in a 1 hour period on cable was an ingenious way.
Dont believe it works, how many "League of Extrodinary Gentleman" Commercials did you see before it came out? They had a feeling it was going to suck in the thethers so they pimped it from here to high heaven. Right now, Im debating to see "The Medallion" because of this, Sure it's Jackie Chan, but when I see him 10x/Hour it scares me.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
and yet I KNEW Gigli stank. I didn't have to go to the theater and waste $$ to find out. I didn't need text messaging to leave me cool to the Hulk. The previews pretty much killed it for me (what a dumbass movie). Charlie's Angels? Nice asses and all but it just isn't my kind of movie, ya know?
People can SAY a movie stinks to other people quite easily. Word of mouth is powerful - it doesn't take text messaging to wreck loser hollywood tripe. Perhaps the MPAA can work on banning text messaging AND start suing people for badmouthing movies vocally.
Or...how about this? Start making GOOD F*CKING MOVIES! Quit jumping on bandwagons all the time. Instead of taking one movie that worked and then copying the crap out of it into derivative movies, they could actually be creative and take risks.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Sadly for the movie industry word of mouth works both ways. The reason movies like The Hulk crash and burn in their second week is that people tell their friends its shit. So word of mouth works or doesn't work based on the whether a movie is any good or not.
The problem is that in the movie industry the question of the quality of a movie never arises (until Oscar time that is). I've heard all sorts of excuses out of Hollywood as to why movies don't do well. For example, for Pearl Harbor it was: "Too long", "Not big enough star power", and most humorously: "Bad reviews". The fact that a movie does poorly because it's crap doesn't even seem to enter the minds of these people (i.e. quoting not the movie was bad, but rather got "bad reviews", as if that somehow has nothing to do with the movie itself). "Texting" is just another excuse to give the big boss as to why your studio is losing money. Kudos to people like Ben Affleck who actually had the guts to say that Gigli failed because it sucked
Maybe schools should teach practicing safe text.
Everyone thinks this article is saying, "Oh no! Text messaging won't let us make crap! We'll have to do something about that text messaging."
All it is saying is that now the movie industry knows that it can't get away with the crap they do make anymore.
What is amazing is that they had an actual term for making money off of a bad movie before the word of mouth filtered out. That I can understand being upset about.
But perhaps this just says that they know they need to do more than hope against word of mouth. Perhaps this just says that the MPAA knows now that they cannot get away with a bad movie. People just find out about it sooner than they expected now. The movie industry will just have to make good movies if they want to make money from now on, and that is as it should be.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
I can just imagine it. Buy your ticket for 9 bucks and then sign a non-disclosure agreement before viewing. Anybody found violating said agreement will be forced to work craft services for J-Lo's next movie.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
So, it's those evil moviegoers who were upset that they had just shelled out $20-$30 to see a "movie" that has nothing resembling a plot and then SMSed their friends to keep them from making the same mistake that are to blame for poor screenwriting, bad editing, and overpaid, spoiled children, er actors, who play pretend for millions of dollars because they have few other skills that are to blame for flops like Gigli?
Good!
Expressions like "carefully crafted images" can be translated from their weasel words origins to:
"We think the public is dumb enough to go to any movie that we spend millions of dollars to create soundbite trailers that show all the good bits and then they're stuck with all of the dreck that comprise the rest of the movie."
I'd rather see a few good movies produced each year than the large volume of crap that gets released as the "movie of the spring/summer/year" onto an unsuspecting public. My reaction to "if you only see one movie this year..." is to not see that movie. I guess the Madison Avenue folks haven't figured out the lesson that "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, BUT YOU CAN'T FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME!!!!".
Oh well, next we'll see the MPAA and the RIAA pulling a SCO and threatening to sue end-users because they said something bad about a recording/movie/etc. Yeah, after all, only the MPAA and RIAA know the real truth and the rest of us are dummies.....
In their dreams.......
In order to watch a movie, you must sign an NDA.
Easy enough.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Signing an NDA not to say anything derogatory about the movie you just watched (and which sucked) won't work because when someone asks "hey Bart, how was that movie last night?", you can always just frown or make a real yucky face to get your message across. Of course these bastards and their scum lawyers will probably lobby some crooked politicians to write a law banning "negative facial gestures". Yeah, frown and go to jail. What it boils down to is a ultra-pro business admin plus you've got all these greedy corporations who are despartely trying to control and micro-manage every aspect of our lives so they can rake in the profits.
Sewage-sucking scum bags. In Soviet Russia...ah forget it.
"a process providing incremental improvement to an existing product, service or business plan" US patent no. 64719235 belongs to me now, and certainly applies to moustraps or anything else. You can still make entirely new things, worse things, or different things, but you had better license "better" from me if you want to make that mousetrap.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You got it. They're complaining because there's no hype they can dish out that will sell you more effectively than your friend who said that it sucked.
Now your friend can instantly convey his review to all of his other friends. No more waiting around the water cooler Monday morning to complain about the bad movie you saw and that everyone else saw opening weekend.
Wouldn't GOOD films benefit from texting in the same way???
Saying that you didn't make enough money on a bad move because it's too easy for people to find out it's bad before they see it is just fucked up... you'll get NO sympathy from anyone for that!
It's been said 100 time already here... solution: make good movies, and texting will BENEFIT you even more!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Why do most people look to blame someone/something instead of admitting that its your fault. Instead of stepping up and saying we made some bad choices about our movies we choose to make, we're going to blame our customers. We can't be wrong afterall, everyone else is.
This is an ongoing trend in society and it's just plain stupid; Rather than solving the problem they just ignore it.
Maybee if the lowered the price of movies people might consider taking a risk of seeing a movie that they wouldn't otherwise.
It couldn't be the fact that it costs nearly $40 for two people to see a movie with popcorn and drinks, could it?
That wasn't a showstopper for me, but, after paying that and THEN being treated to a trailer with a gaffer who claims that "film piracy" take food off his table, well, that was the last straw for me. That was my last entry into a first run house, with one possible exception: There's a film coming out this winter that I've waited all my life to see. After that, I doubt I will ever subject myself to a first run cinema. And Hollywood have themselves, not me, to blame. I remained a customer through the DMCA, through the Valenti years, and until now. But that was the absolute last straw, to make me pay for the privilege of being lied to and called a theif.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
So, if they banned texting, what next? Will they ban the act of, say, telling someone if a movie was good or bad? Or how about they ban reviewing of movies, too? Because that probably accounts for at least some of the Gigli disaster.
But, whatever you do, don't ever, ever, EVER blame the shitty movies themselves!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Y'know, your comment is pretty much *exactly* a paraphrase of the article, except missing the actual numbers and background. And then you've tacked on an obvious comment at the end -- a comment the original author probably left out so as to avoid insulting the intelligence of his readers.
Sitting through the Anti-Piracy(Don't download) Commerical shown before SWAT(seen against my better judgement).
HELLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOO?!? Anyone awake in there MPAA? I fscking PAID ALREADY don't you dare insinuate that I steal(which I never have) from you when I'm sitting here with a ticket stub in my hand. Bunch of idiots.
Let's continue to perpetuate this fear that our consumers are guilty. Great way to prop up those sales of shitty movies.
Not only that but I recently read an article (NY Times or Newsday) discussing the ressurgence of theatres. Does every movie have to be a blockbuster $300Million profit maker?
Isn't there one person in the movie industry that is thinking, "Hey if we stop making movies that even the actors agree is shit(Gigli) then maybe people will watch them."
They're even so bad that they're blaming other sister products on poor box office returns as Lara Croft is doing. The people making the shitty movie are blaming the shitty video game. Wow. That's just pathetic.
ok rant over. thanks.
-- taking over the world, we are.
>>I'm sure it will be banned, any day now, yep, right around the corner...
I agree -- it's just a matter of time.
Look how far we've come. Twenty years ago, legalese was rare at the consumer level. Now, it seems like packaging and advertising for every conceivable consumer product includes micro-print disclaimers wordsmithed by a small army of attorneys. As a consumer, you have to question everything and jealously guard your privacy during every interaction with retailers. Our culture is being damaged from this insane structure.
I think that banning commentary is a natural extention of where we are right now. Think about it -- it's not unusual for companies to ban the publishing of benchmark testing results as part of their EULA. *cough*DOTNET*cough* This amounts to a banning of criticism, because it prohibits this dissemination of information, particularly those with objective measures.
How long before the MPAA prints something to the effect of "By purchasing and redeeming this movie ticket, you agree to the terms of usage as published at http://www.WeOwnYou.com which may change at any time, without further notice"? Of course, the "agreement" will prohibit the moviegoer from communicating any opinion to a third party regarding the content of the film with the advance written permission of the studio, lest it harm precious sales.
I didn't see T3, and I didn't even get a text message. I suspected by the information released before the opening day that it would suck. And on the first Monday at work, the hardcore Terminator fans confirmed it. The movie reviews also wrote that the movie failed in the areas that made me think that the other 2 was great.
Shame on you for missing the chance of telling a great story. I will also be careful to avoid movies in the future made by the same persons.
I'll be back!!
Uhmm,, no,,,, no I don't think so.
at some point the general public has to reach some critical mass wrt noticing the levels of hypocrisy and knee-jerk stupidity coming out from corporateville (and governmentberg too really). One has to wonder if the average American is as stupid as these celluloid prison guards would think, or if they are so apathetic that people get away with making these outrageous claims - which later get sold to congress and enacted into idiot legislation. /me goes to hork down a gallon of coffee...this shit requires me to be lucid before ranting further
Which is an interesting point in itself. With net access now so common, if a company delays the European release date the chances are that by the time it comes out a lot of us have read net-based reviews from the US telling us not to bother.
Cheers,
Ian
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."
yeah, cause it takes forever to discuss a movie over the phone.
Next they will Ban yelling at or with the screen..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I don't see a lot of controversy or conspiracy theory in this article. The industry expert quoted all but says that the slowness of word-of-mouth was factored into past releases so that even bombs could recover their costs in the first weekend if they were hyped enough.
All this article says to me is that the movie industry was slightly blindsided by how text messaging changed the speed of the "word of mouth" effect. Doesn't seem like there's much conspiracy about this.
I find this fascinating, however, in that it shows that social systems tend toward democracy. Just as physical systems tend toward chaos and energy must be supplied to impose order, so it goes with social systems. The movie industry has imposed order by inserting money, thus maintaining control. With the democratization of the marketing message, however, they will have to change and learn how to harness the chaos... or insert MORE money per film (perhaps by giving away movie-related merchandise to all viewers or by further engaging viewers during the filming) to impose order on this more democratic system.
Or they could just make good movies.
Nah. Stupid idea.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Because my tastes are different from many other people's, I usually don't pay too much attention to what I hear about a movie. It's mostly what I see in a trailer that decides for me weather or not I see a movie. Maybe if the movies didn't suck the trailers wouldn't have to either.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that
Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Newspapers are trollish in nature. The Guardian doubly so.
This wasn't meant for you guys, it's movie exec leet speak.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Am I the only one who parses "carefully crafted marketing image" as "brainwashing" ?
The unofficial
A more likely scenario is some sort of legalese at the beginning of the film, a license agreement for watching the film. You, the watcher, agree not to publicly disparage the film, and may not distribute any reviews of the film without the studio's approval...
Sort of along the lines of the Bose tactics w/r/t their audio equipment. Sue the audiophile magazines for informing their readers of the sub-optimal quality of the Bose products. Now that the RIAA is going after the individual consumers, it's time for other *IAs to go after them too!
You drank my drink, you drunk!
When was the last time you went to a movie that had actual professional actors instead of *stars* who can barely read cue cards?
If you read between the lines, they're saying that they are lying about the movies ("carefully crafted marketing image") and that the customers are catching on faster than they used to ("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.").
The old trick of shoveling out crap but still making money isn't working anymore. And instead of trying to fix the problems (make better movies and stop lying about the product), they're blaming the faster communication methods.
Eventually, of course, it's going to result in better movies; the companies will have to adapt to the new reality or die. Unlike with our friends at the RIAA, they won't be able to buy legislation to prop up their failing business model.
The "Defense" Industry and the Energy Industry got together to get a massive government subsidy to make war on some poor schmuck Third World dictatorship and take over its energy resources, coincidentally among the largest in the world.
All the MPAA and RIAA have to do is think up a War on Irate Consumers or something, and have the government spend billions of dollars over a period of, say, 50 years in order ot bolster the MPAA's and RIAA's dim-witted business models.
The MPAA doesn't need to outlaw text messageing, they will simply bring everyone who watches the movie to court as any memory they retain of it is a violation of copyright law as their failure to surrender the offending neurons in their brain to applicable authorities. Retaining such memories (also known as pirated material) is punishible by frontal lobe labotomy. RIAA is getting in on the action as well, next time you hum on the street, sing in the shower, or lip sync in your car, make sure there aren't any RIAA lawyers lurking.
-Peng Lord
Its the same creative accounting they use to make sure they dont have to pay taxes, or royalties on net income.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yes, they are, and they're probably right.
They should get rid of free speech.
I know that the **AA is just below SCO and M$ on the list of most hated groups around here, but they never advocated anything of the time - it was simply a guy making an observation that their marketing schemes aren't as effective as they used to be. Nothing more. So perhaps we can wait to let loose with our anti-**AA tirades until they do something ro really deserve it. At their rate, that should require approximately three /. stories from now.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Another thing that movie industry execs might want to factor in: Going to a theatre is a big hassle. Sure, it's nice watching a good movie on a big screen, but with home theatre systems becoming more common, why bother going to a theatre when you can see it at home on DVD in a few months? I've found myself very selective about what I'm going to see in a theatre since I got my home system.
Besides, you can drink beer, eat munchies that don't cost a fortune, pause when need to use the toilet, have more comfortable seating, don't have to tollerate some tosser yammering on his mobile, etc. when you're watching a movie at home.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
It's Al Gore's fault, after all, he invented the internet.
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
I'm all for it. Stick a big faraday cage around movie theaters so no signals can get in or out. That way people will not be able to use their cellphones/etc during the show. It's about courteousness and silence, not about censorship IMO. Talking on cellphones and clicking away at text messagers during a film is antisocial behavior. By all means, once you get out of the theater tell everyone how godawful the movie was.
And don't give me any "but people need cellphones to call 911" crap. There are phones in the lobby, get off your ass if there's an emergency. I understand there are some movie theaters in Canada where they already do this.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
So I've been doing a lot of thinking about this over the past few days,
not a lot but you know it's been in my mind. The MPAA is a large group of
movie studios - Walt Disney, Sony, MGM, Paramount, Universal, you get the
idea - basically, if there's been a movie released recently, and it's
gotten good press coverage, they're behind it.
This is why I don't like going to movies. Movie studios are only
interested in producing movies which will score gigantic First-Weekend
sales: this has been evident with nearly every movie produced since
Titanic, the last movie to make a dent in the number-of-weeks-on-top
category. Look at the movies we've had this summer that have been
moderately successful: X-Men 2, Matrix 2, Bruce Almighty, Finding Nemo,
The Hulk, Terminator 3, and Charlie's Angels 2. All of which offer
little-to-know value beyond flash; Matrix, according to a vast majority of
reviews not influenced by the neato-CGI effects, has lost much of its
philosophy in favor of lots more flashiness. X-Men 2 delivers nothing of
substance, along with the rest of the list. I haven't seen Finding Nemo
because I am currently not interested in seeing much Disney (due to their
involvement in the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act to protect
their works from going into public domain), however from what I hear it is
a good family movie, but it doesn't offer the emotion that Disney made so
well with the likes of Bambi, Lion King, and Snow White to name a few (a
side note here - if the Grimm Brothers had actively pursued an extension
of copyright to the point where it is now - 100 years - then Disney would
have been in copyright violation in their making of Snow White, and much
to all of the proceeds would go back to the Grimm Brothers, and Disney
would not have achieved their large following).
They're only interested in the first weekend ratings. All of the movies
this summer made a vast majority of their money during the first weekend.
This is due in two parts: 1. the tremendous hype machines surrounding the
movies did their job and created such a need to view (so they can talk to
the people who saw the movie, they don't want to be the only one at the
water cooler who didn't see it), and 2. After the group of people who saw
it came back to tell the story realized that the movie was nothing but
hype, word got back to regular people, and they no longer wanted to see
it.
It pisses me off. 20 years ago, MPAA were making movies that are still
being enjoyed. Star Wars, Indiana Jones. Jaws. The Exorcist. The
Godfather I & II. Das Boot. Raging Bull. Do you think that any of the
crap that Hollywood is pushing down our throats now stands a chance of
being cared about in 10 years? There may be a couple diamonds in the
rough: Lord of the Rings trilogy, the first Matrix, maybe Fight Club. But
they are few and far between, especially since the number of movies
created are increasing.
One thing I blame is a reliance on CGI - computer graphics in movies.
When Titanic came out 5 years ago or something, it was hailed as being
spectacular. It now looks ancient. Computer graphics age movies faster
that non-cgi graphics. I wish movie studios would pick up on this. I was
watching Das Boot a few nights ago, and it was amazing how much more
modern it looks than a computer aided one, say, Hunt for Red October
(granted, it had primitive computer systems, but still they had the
opportunity to not utilize current technology). Much better movie as
well, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it for a not-so-glorious
look at war.
I was one of the few people who was not awestruck by the Amazing
Spider-Man's not-so-amazing computer graphics. I thought some scenes,
especially near the beginning of the movie, were almost to the point where
they looked like cartoons. I just watched it again, and it's even more
archaic than I remember it from a y
Yeah and the failing music industry is now saying that the CD sales are failing because of cheeseburgers
This is a clever trick by the phone companies to try and sell text messaging as something that's actually *useful*.
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
You win this one. RTFA. They're finally admitting what you scream and holler about every time theres some statement made about internet piracy:
They realize that they're earning less because their product is not worth 15 bucks a head to see, and the public is on to them.
Noone had to tell me Gigli was a terrible movie. I'm already sick to death of "Bennifer", neither have any talent, and it was obvious to me that a vehicle for two pretty airheads was not something I'd be interested in.
Now speaking of movies, who else saw "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"? Geezus christ.
If you ever imagined that Captain Nemo, Jeckle/Hyde, the invisble man, one of the chicks from dracula, the guy from King Solomon's Mines and Dorian Gray got together in some sort of 19th century version of the X-Men to fight Dr Moriarty for some reason? If so, have you ever imagined that this story would be written by someone who'd NEVER READ ANY OF THE ORIGINAL BOOKS AND HAS A SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON IDEA OF THE CHARACTERS? Shit, Jeckle/Hyde was portrayed as an incredible hulk kind of guy. And yeah - that Dorian Gray - the one from the Wilde book "I will destroy you with the power of Sodomy!"
Sad thing is everyone else liked it. When Dorian Gray came onscreen I said "Uh oh Connery, you better watch your butt!", there was a sole fit of laughter from someone way in the back who'd no doubt read the book - or seen a decent movie adaptation of it.
Anyways.
The MPAA is realizing the era of "throw some big names and a pile of FX into any old shlocky script" blockbuster era is over. We've seen all the explosions and stunts we're gonna see. They know they have to either do better - or perhaps do it cheaper. I would have seen the hulk for 5 bucks - IF that included a soda (which is only worth like a dime to them for fuck sakes). Ok, I know the theatres and the movie producers are two seperate entities, but they could work it out.
People want value for their entertainment dollar, and they know they aren't going to get it from Gigli. My 8 and 6 year old kids know that. For the cost to take them to a movie, we can stop by Babbages and pick out a console title and be more entertained.
Ok, end of story. Now relax. And turn your fucking phones off in the theater, text mode or not, it's still annoying. If you dont like the movie, leave, and text/talk/bleep/bloop in the damn parking lot.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Tombraider 2: horny teenage males.
2f2f: ugh, just read what maddox wrote about fake fast cars snotty kids waste their daddy's cash on and the replys he gets from said individuals who fit this movies targeted demographic.
Instead of making up my own mind that there might be a not too small probability that Charlie's Angels and The Hulk would indeed suck sideways, I trust people who send me text messages. [voice type="comicbook storeguy"]Worst scapegoat ever[/voice]
I just moved from the US to London (check out my blog please!) and the difference in texting is astounding. The only time in the US I saw texting was on some lame ass commercial where the girl tell some guy to 'text me later'. Yeah right I snickered.
But in London it's a way of life. Everyone texts. Just tonight I was on the underground next to a girl who was texting a friend. I never knew thumbs could move so fast.
Interestingly enough, many people told me that someone told them that Hulk was a crap movie.
;)
I went to see Hulk (as a pretty harsh critic of many movies) and I really, really enjoyed it. Then again, I'm not a fan of Titanic, American Pie, Zoolander, etc. which are all box office hits.
Some titles I did enjoy were Amadeus, Chocolat, Dr Strangelove.
What made me go and see Hulk at the last minute? Actually, it was that all other movies out at the time were marketed very badly and Hulk looked the best of a bad bunch.... and I had tickets to burn
AC
It'd be easy. Just claim people are making bootleg copies of the movie with their camera phones. Ridiculous, yeah, but you just need an excuse, any excuse. Then say you can't tell the difference between cell phones, so ban phones in the theatre entirely. Voila.
At least until everybody leaves the theatre, anyway. It'll buy them what, maybe a couple of hours? It still won't get them to the good old days before cells and the Internet when it took days for word to get out.
And nowhere will you see anybody from the industry thinking maybe they need to put out a better product, and that that would solve their problem. That in a nutshell is what's wrong with the MPAA, RIAA, etc.Should we expect telephones to be banned as well? I mean, I could tell my buddy that a movie sucks just as easily as I could text him... or ooo ooo EMAIL, now there's the thing!!!
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
First we have the RIAA making shit music and blaming p2p file sharing for its poor sales. Now we have the MPAA making shit movies and blaming the public for its poor sales. Hmmm...maybe Disney will have to bribe Congress and get text messaging banned.. Because after all there's NO WAY the PRODUCT could suck! Right?
Word of mouth is good... unless it's bad.
Actually I thought the purpose of all Hollywood advertising was to start a word of mouth avalanche, like Blair Witch Project: put teasers out there to get a select group (Early Adopters) to hype it for you until the ball starts rolling (spread it to the Early Majority who in turn pass it onto...).
Problem is if there's already a significant minority (say folks tired of the B'Fleck + J'Lo marketing monstrosity) taking a negative opinion of the work, the opposite effect is true. Same thing happened to Waterworld and Battlefield Earth (strange how all three actually did suck). Such are the risks of advertising.
What is music when you despise all sound?
This isn't very good, but all I could come up with at short notice.
.
The movie industry is dying It is official; Independent confirms: **AA is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered **AA community when Independent.co.uk confirmed that **AA blockbuster revenue has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all moviegoers. Coming on the heels of a recent Independent survey which plainly states that **AA has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. **AA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent test of movies that don't suck.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict **AA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: **AA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for **AA because **AA is dying. Things are looking very bad for **AA. As many of us are already aware, **AA continues to turn out some of the worst movies EVER created. Blood flows like a river from the eyeballs of moviegoers who watched "Gigli", "Tombraider 2", and "LXG".
MPAA is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its creativity. The sudden and unpleasant departures of movie quality and any attempt at doing something new only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Hollywood is dying.
. .
Due to insanely high prices, abysmal plots, and movies that are ALL sequels, spinoffs, remakes, or advertisements for Disney rides, MPAA will go out of business and be taken over by the RIAA who sell another load of dog crap to the increasingly unsatisfied masses. Soon the RIAA will also be dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that **AA has steadily declined in viewers. **AA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If **AA is to survive at all it will be because of politicians who get bribed by people like Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti. **AA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, **AA is dead.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
I don't see the problem. If a movie sucks, people will tell other people. If a movie is good, people will tell other people.
That's why I didn't see the hulk and charlies angels and why I did go see Pirates and Bend it like Beckham.
Oh, and I have never been saved from seeing a bad movie by a friend who texted me as I was heading to the theater...
has anyone?
This people are so greedy, they always want people to shut up and watch, so they cant face the truth that the films they make are sh!t
Two teenagers were sending text messages back and forth in the theater while the movie was playing.
I guess it's better than whispering back and forth...
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
Did I oversleep and wake up on the first of April? I've never seen an article that is as laughable as this. The movie industry is upset beacuse they produce movies knowing they are crap and put big bucks behind promoting them only to have an evil technology like text messaging help people spread the word quicker? Maybe a better idea would be to produce movies which arn't complete crap! Besides, I didn't go to see The Hulk, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or Gigli, not beacuse a friend text messaged me but beacuse they were OBVIOUSLY crap and any fool who couldn't tell that from the previews on tv deserves to get ripped off in the theater.
Facial gestures can violate a NDA. If you signed a NDA to watch an alien autopsy and agreed not to tell anyone what the aliens looked like and I came up to you and said "were they Grays? Just not your head up and down if yes" ... you would violate the NDA if you nodded your head. Disclosure --> any communication (verbal or otherwise) that discloses the info you agreed not to disclose.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks.
Really? Well, let's examine the possibilities. Either people are telling their friends a new movie stinks because it stinks, or because there is a massive conspiracy to lie about a good movie. Nah, it couldn't possibly be because the movies stink.
Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image.
Perhaps Hollywood should try making movies, instead of making marketing images.
What I ment was rather that they don't seem to make
the connection necessary for the simple solution of "stop making movies that sucks and relies on special effects and big names".
Then again, what they are saying is basically "usually we managed to fool enough people to watch our crap, this doesn't work any more". Let us hope the solution to that isn't "more advertising".
"GNU's not Unix....it's Linux" / Kami "kokamomi" Petersen
Actually, all of those movies are probably OK. But any time you expect people to pay $10 a person for a movie, and another $10 a person for popcorn - the movie has to be DAMN GOOD. Otherwise, it gets labled as sucky. Now, lots of movies are watchable, and enjoyable on DVD where they cost $2 for a WHOLE FAMILY to watch with the $2 BIG BOWL of popcorn, a pause button and a bathroom that has been cleaned this century. Sorry, but in order for me to pay too much money, for a crappy uncomfortable seat, with annoying people text messaging next to me, and crappy expensive pop-corn - the movie better be damn good. Otherwise, I'll keep my money, thank you very much. Text that!
I'm really quite suprised, given that Text messaging is catching on really slowly in the US, especially compared to cell phone usage (voice) and Internet usage.
Atleast they didn't do like the RIAA and say that piracy is reducing their profits. This is much more humorous.. "People are telling each other how badly our movies suck so fast, that no one goes to see them."
no comment
This is really the arrogance of the RIAA, and those in the entertainment industry.
Rather than blame the fact that they produce lots of low-quality, only-to-make money pieces of junk, they blame some obscure reason related to new technology.
How much more apparent does it need to be that the industry has lost touch with those who are interested in it?
Of course, like lemmings we (myself included) will continue to give them money to watch the garbage they produce.
If you read the article (rather than just the blurb), nowhere do the movie people actually say that this is a bad thing, that they don't like this turn of events, or that they want to do anything to change it.
It could well be a good thing overall, such that they can release good movies with staying power rather than going for glitzy special effects that make good ads. The movie business, unlike the music business, actually likes to produce good stuff, but they haven't been able to do so successfully very often, because it was so much more effective to focus on advertizing than on good movies.
The old way was a case of a degenerate strategy which sucks for everyone but is successful; using a more pleasent strategy just isn't cost effective. If people ignore ads and hear whether movies are any good from their friends, there is a much better chance of good movies not flopping in the box office like they have before.
the "Coupon The Movie" skit from Mr. Show
No its not. Beep Beep. Beep Beep.
Or then the assholes with the cutesy polyphonic alert tones, there was this one idiot in a restaurant who had Spongebob Squarepants laugh on the text feature. Wlalalalhahalalhal. (poke with single finger for 5 minutes). Wlahalhallahalala
BOOT TO THE HEAD
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I could see them adding a requirement to the purchase of the ticket that you agree to an EULA stating that you will not review the movie without written permission from them, kinda like the MS Eula on their windows update page that states that you won't post .net benchmarks without prior written permission from MS. It's not an insurmountable difference in format...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Speaking as someone who's thumb clicks like a cue ball hitting the black, it can only be a matter of time before text messengers thumbs snap off. The studios can then earn the money they are entitled to for their informative and entertaining productions.
Jokes about restricting free speech aside, stealth marketing is the much more likely (and insidious) response to the people tuning out mass media hype and tuning into their webs-of-trusting-friends.
And by the way, my fellow slashdotters, Gigli is actually a GREAT movie! I really can't recommend it enough! Don't believe the critics or those lame spoofed SMS text messages either! See it tonight fer shizzle!!
--
Power to the Peaceful
Isn't something that causes bad movies to loose money a good thing? From a market driven economy point of view. If bad expensive movies loss money then studios will stop making them. Instead of spending huge amounts of money for big names and effects they might start looking for better stories , new idea, and even new talent. Maybe the will drop the ticket prices a little and not charge so much for popcorn. I am convinced that gram for gram movie popcorn may be the most expensive substance on earth.
Naw. There must be a problem when good marketing can not sell a bad product!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Okay, I rarely find myself defending the movie industry... but... Am I the only one troubled by the fact that there are no facts in this article? That the only attributed quotes don't even mention text messaging? The (one) executive quoted merely said that word of mouth now spreads faster than it used to. As near as I can tell, the emphasis on text messaging is all by the reporter. It's not hard to imagine how a careless movie exec, talking about teens and their ever-faster methods of communication, may have cited text messaging as one avenue quick communication -- but there is no evidence in this article that any hollywood-type ever really blamed text messaging for its problems. Just a quick critique -- and a quick google search didn't turn up anything more definitive than this little article. I don't believe even They Could Be That Stupid.
Industry credits texting with helping hit movies bring in large box office...
why would teenagers message their friends that a movie stinks?
maybe, just maybe, it's because the movie stinks.
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
The fact that fast-communicating audiences are "scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns" doesn't register to the movie moguls as MAKE BETTER MOVIES. Talk about living in your own pocket universe.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
anyone remember if things were this ridiculous the last time the economy went down the toilet?
When I first read the /. summary, I thought someone had mistaken an Onion article as the truth.
this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image
Hmm lemme guess... it goes something like "everyone will pay for at least one ticket before finding out it SUCKS!". reaaaally carefully crafted, indeed.
If they're so mad about WORD OF MOUTH, why not attack MOVIE CRITICS? After all, IT'S THEIR JOB!
Only in America....
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
i believe distribution costs (e.g., printing up all the stock and shipping it to the many and sundry theatres) are not counted in the production budget of a movie. that is to say: titanic cost, what, US $100 million to make? this figure does not cover the cost to produce the thousands of reels (anybody know just how much many reels a 3 hour movie is?), get the insurance for the deliveries, and get 'em to the theatres.
it similarly doesn't cover the ad campaigns, which are ponied up by the studio, not the production company.
and also bear in mind that the studio execs forecast what they think a movie can make. whatever you may think of 'em, they make their livelihood figuring how much movies can make. to them, all these costs, production and otherwise, are investments. so expectations hit [x], which they hope will hit sales [y] and in some notable cases, those 2 axes never intersect.
ed
-matt
If texting is a no-no, then perhaps we should run out of the theater screaming how awful this movie was to everyone waiting in line for the next showing.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Hmmm... An interesting "between the lines" view of Hollywood.
:-) it seems that the movie studios believe that people will cancel their plans to see a movie if a friend tells them that it's bad.
After reading the article (obviously I'm new around here
This seems to also presume that people don't heed the press reviews for a movie - they value their friends' reviews much higher.
Also, it seems that Hollywood is depending on this. They had found that if they hype something well enough then people would go see it on the first weekend - before they got "friend reviews" which said "don't bother". This fits with that industry's obsession with the first weekend box-office revenues - some movies won't make money if people don't go the first weekend.
Now, with faster communications, the "friend reviews" can get out before the first viewings.
Cool! Maybe we'll get better movies!
I'm totally with you. I've grown fond of silence and scenery over the last couple years. Going to the beach and reading is quite enjoyable. Driving in silence makes traffic congestion irrelevant. Games are sufficient for escaping reality. Even the occasional movie. The rest is entirely unnecessary.
People don't realize that the noise they allow to constantly invade their minds is always garbage. You generally don't throw garbage around your room but the mind seems to be an acceptable place to toss crap. People profit from that strange social acceptance. But not from me.
Peace.
Laws are for people with no friends.
If they made GOOD movies, then wouldn't people text message each other and RECOMMEND the movie?
Lame.
Adam
I saw EVERY movie EXCEPT those three!
no kidding!
I did not watch hulk because bad reviews and the hulk looked computer generated (waxy and low rez)
i did not watch charlies angels becasue bill murray was replaced by that non-funny black man.
I do not care if I am a racist, i wanted bill murray. I heard he was a pain on the set of the first movie but still without him i did not care to see it.
i did hate the matrix sequel for innumerable reasons, but i saw it, as well as every other moview this summer.
The only quote from a movie exec is "In the old days ...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."
Now, from that we get "Movie execs say text messaging is too blame"?
I must be missing something here.
The internet may have made word of mouth travel faster, but I think three bigger reasons for bad ticket sales are:
1) The price of movies and condiments are just ludicrous. Prices have triped and quadrupled in the last 15 years.
2) Second run movie houses have become more popular. Why spend $15.00 to see a movie when you can wait 6 weeks and see the same flick for $6.00?
3) Home theatre systems have improved to the point where picture quality and sound are really, really good.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Is it April 1st again already?
Lack of North American texting blamed on texting.
I have on a number of occassions left the cinema, come home and messengered a few night owls about how good/bad a movie I've just seen is.
I'm not a texter, but can imagine younger people using text as their medium.
This seems like good news. Maybe studios will start concentrating on making quality movies rather than big opening weekend movies that are shite, but hope to recoup in 1 weekend.
Bad movies aren't doing poorly because they suck, but because people are now able to tell more people that they suck...
I usually look at Rotten Tomatoes before I watch a movie, if it scores too poorly I am less likely to watch it.
...is an informed public
Headline should have been: Acknowledges Texting Effects Bad Box Office Turnout. The article was short sort and what was said was even handed. Slashdot clip is totally off base and seems to be talking about a different article. Nothing sinister here, just a Slashdot spin on an innocent (and insightful) comment by a Miramax guy.
Quack, quack.
I'm going to continue buying music from independent/small label musicians (and continue writing my own).
I'm going to continue listening/donating to commercial free internet radio stations.
And I'll read too.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Welfare granny is at it again. Jacking up the prices everywhere.....
The movie industry has know for YEARS that even if a movie is crap, they can still pull in $$ with a big hype campaign. This is one of the reasons they pay so much attention to week-2-week falloff of ticket sales. It is based off of just how fast word-of-mouth is.
They admit the idea of "buying your gross", and aren't talking about banning anything. They're going to have to rethink the entire idea of "buying success" with a crap movie.
I think we're going to see a lot more direct-to-video and movies that only stay a couple of weeks before hitting the DVD market.
About time, too.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
IM blamed for movie busts? ... that's all wrong. Beverly Hills plastic surgeons are!
If all the people who think a movie sucked text messaged the producers, MPAA, the sucky actors etc.
While I'm sitting there watching a movie at the theater I text all my friends vivid details of what's going on. It's almost like downloading the "cam" version off the internet anyhow... this just saves them all time...
*hangs his head and sticks out his arms ready for the cuffs*
Wait till they find out about mrcranky.com!
I just sent a txt to a few friends: " microsoft stinks!@# " I sit back and wait for microsoft to crumble under the wrath of txt messages! mwuhaha!
They just need to develop a tech that will tell them that the movie sucks _before_ they film it.
I haven't seen any of the movies referenced, so I cannot say whether or not they sucked. What I can say is that word of mouth has dictated that I not see them, because of those whose opinions I hold in high regard. What next! Are you gonna have to sign an NDA before seeing a movie?
Wouldn't folks also text their friends and families upon viewing something really great? Wouldn't this be an advantage if the film was, actually, good?
I have a hypothetical situation here. What if hollywood made a good movie, then word of how good it was would spread faster and by the same logic sales would go up.
So maybe, just maybe faster communication isn't causing sales to decrease. Poor movie quality is.
I wonder when the MPAA will require a 1-week NDA for viewers of first-run movies - instead of making a movie people want to see, you get a few suckers XXXXXXX consumers to view your movie and then let the money roll in until the NDA's expire.
begin{sarcasm}
Yeah, that'll work.
end{sarcasm}
Media companies insist on business plans designed to manage, optimize, and shovel crap when making a good movie would be easier - with good content, instead of managing response, your customers work at managing it for your benefit. Instead, the music and movie industries treat their paying customers as the enemy and are surprised when their customers are "disloyal".
Both the music and movie industries need to change or die. At this point, I don't care which.
And get rid of all communication tools. TV, Radio, Phone, Email... we'll get all our news by watching the weekly news reels at the theatre! Good plan. =)
MPAA Baby: Bwwwwuuuut mooooommmmmmiiiiieee! I, I, I spenwt $100 million on .... on... on ... Da Hulk... Why donwt evewyone like it? Day say itz crrrraaapp...wwwwwaaaaaahhhh....
At least that's what it sounded like to me...
Earth to MPAA/RIAA/Whatever: WE, THE PUBLIC, able to exercise our purchasing power in the most efficient ways possible, do hereby state and affirm that we will no longer be subjecated by your Ministries of Deception (Advertising Departments). We will no longer spend our hard earned cash on CRAP.
If what you're producing is NO GOOD, we're going to tell everyone we know to stay home and save their money...
Moral: We don't want continual releases of the same rehashed BOHICA shit. Make something new. Make it cool. Make it worth watching. Price it at $5 per ticket - hell, I'll probably see it twice. Price the DVD at $12-$15 and I'll buy it. Add some cool stuff and I'll pay ya $20 if it's cool enough. Price the sound track at $3-$5 and I'll buy that too. Put it on pay per view for $2.00 and if I haven't bought the DVD yet - I just might be tempted to do so...
OR, keep up your schenagganins and we'll put your collective dicks in the dirt just like those morons at the RIAA...
...that society has devised its own method for combatting spin.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Hulk 2003 wasn't nearly as amusing as RotH featuring Thor and The Hulk. Hulk 2003 takes it self far too seriously with the offical military involvement. When I think of The Hulk, I think of a band of nasty criminals after some high tech gadget who stumble on David Banner who turns into the Hulk and generally thrashes the places, yet somehow manages to get away without being spotted.
This is The Hulk I remember, a tacky live action TV show that makes you laugh when you watch it.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
on the fact that the TR games suck. Good story about this type of idiocy in August 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly.
Lately the attendence has been on the rise for American movies in Europe, as well as elsewhere in the world. One would think that if text messaging were the cause of the drop, it would drop even more in Europe (assuming people didn't like it there), because more people use text messaging in Europe because of how expensive cell phone minutes are. One might also suggest that the rise could be related to text messaging and Europeans are texting their friends about how good a movie is. Hmmm That actually makes more sense, Europeans like to complement things, whereas Americans prefer to complain.
I can turn my thumb down a lot faster than I can push 8 4-4 4-4-4 7-7-7-7 6 6-6-6 8-8-8 4-4-4 3-3 7-7-7-7 8-8 2-2-2 5-5 7-7-7-7
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press?
The big houses might be more afraid of this, actually. It seems to me that the better, sleeper movies lately have been either foreign films or from art houses, neither of which are spending a lot on marketing campaigns.
It's a fact of life that as communication continues to advance, we need corporate media less and less to tell us what to think. And this pisses them off to no end.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
The article basically argues that communication channels are now so fast that bad word of mouth spreads much quicker than ever before. But this is the "half empty" scenario. What these pricks don't understand is that the reverse logic applies too. Good movies, even small independent movies get a nice shot in the arm as people recommend them. Remember the Blair Witch project? Bowling for Columbine? These were movies that got big through the Internet, or based off of Internet hype, not massive advertising budgets. All Miramax, hmm...
So, then is text-messaging credited with those movies that did exceptionally well such as Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean and the Matrix Reloaded? I know I text messaged every one I know personally telling them to see those!!! (NOT!)
Please, what ever you do, MPAA...
Don't blame any of this on the recession.
Or the current unemployment rate.
If you do, the RIAA would reconsider suing all of us.
Surely we can't blame poor economy on ANY bad box office. If the movie tanks the second week, it has to be because the viewer are text messaging one another.
It's not critics... We hate all of them.
It's not poor film making... Big, dumb and loud, that's the AMERICAN WAY!
We don't want well written scripts, with decent talent! We want pretty people who act stupid for 90 minutes so some teenager can claim that that film was "Dope" thus earning street cred.
I think all cinema for the next 3 year should all be reality show based films. Do enough of those, kill off reality series on TV, and life will return to normal when all the crap cycles through.
Like a media enema.
Surely a few people saw that... whew - amazing mix of arrogant self-importance, ennui, and total lack of substance. Let 'em starve
This has GOT to be the worst case of corperate whining that I have ever seen!
Technoli
What seems strange to me is the way text messaging is being singled out. Lots more people communicate by email and (voice) cell phones than text messaging, and these allow people to spread word just as quickly (with the exception of actually sending a text message during a movie, which I've never seen anyone do).
What evidence do they have that text messaging is the new, prefered medium for panning craptacular movies?
*******
"What good is science if no one gets hurt?!" - Professor Chromedome
So it's taking much less time for people to communicate with each other and pass on that a movie sucks incredible and isn't worth wasting money on.
Good for all of us, I think, bad for the MPAA.
But why even bother to mention it. Oh, people have a new way of informing each other when our movies suck. Will the MPAA actually try to put some type of block on text-messaging as opposed to making non-sucky movies? Then I'll do it the old fashioned way and tell people going in that the movie bites as I'm headed out.
And how about the high cost of movies and the fact that they start will bullshit advertising... I suppose they don't factor that in as a reason why in todays days of tighter coin moviewatching is declining.
We have an effect (less moviegoers in shorter time).... and a possibly contributing cause (textmessaging)... but the root cause is still shitty movies...
What a pity. The industry can't hoodwink the public any more by slapping PR lipstick on a pig and getting enough early rubes through the door to make back some of their money. Recording sales have been dropping too, and I wonder if the RIAA has the same hyper-fast word-of-mouth problem with CDs, and it isn't the file sharing. That would be sweet, sweet justice ...
whats next, mpaa/riaa will try to ban phone service because you can still tell friends or whomever that such and such movie/cd stinks via voice?
the history of the world
Yea, it's amazing how they can spin it. And with the international and future cable and network sales, DVD and VHS sales, as well as all of the merchandising tie-ins that were just about shoved down our throat, that turkey of a movie is going to make them hundreds of millions. It's hard to imagine how even the first weekend got the box office it did, there were leaked copies on the Internet before it hit the theaters, and I was already getting the word that it was a big turkey long before the instant text crowd started SMSing each other. That it got the box office it did points more to the failure of the communication system to overcome the studio hype than it does to the ability of text messaging to protect people.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Christ! This is unbelievable. You know, if you market your products to the short attention span crowd you shouldn't be surprised when they decide you aren't worth the effort. Give me the goods, and I'll gladly pay for it.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
they want to be able to blame future losses on filesharing so their blaming something else.
am I the only one smelling something fishy in our o-so-well working capitalism system???
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
does that term apply to the non-software world too?
Facts:
- Movies now have approx 20 minutes of previews.
- Movie ticket prices have sky rocketed over the last couple years - 8$ where I am now. (you can buy some DVDs for this price...and OWN the movie)
- Movie theatres have not increased the quality in service that they provide - we still have projection based movies, in stadium (at best) style seating.
- Movie makers spend millions on marketing for many movies, including the ones mentioned in the article above - posters, TV spots, talk show host appearances, toys, food, and many more.
Conflict: Given these facts, it is safe to extrapolate that movie goers have a lot to put up with in order to see a movie. Final conclusion: spending X million dollars on marketing does NOT ensure a block buster hit, when you take into consideration other factors of the movie going experience. Recommendations: Lower the ticket price Remove ads from movies that received negative test screen results Create more consistently "better" movies (certainly a moving target here)Maybe the theater owners will install cell phone jammers to at least slow down the instant messagers. That would have the benefit (for me) of not having idiots take calls during a movie.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Does the MPAA want to ban text messaging inside the theater, or everywhere? They could probably convince the courts to uphold a ban in a theater and claim it is a nuisance and distracts the rest of the audience, but if the MPAA wants to ban all text messaging world wide then they are in for a big surprise. The courts may ban the MPAA...
Just my $0.02 worth.
In other news, founder of www.hatsforfish.com blames failure of his enterprise on ill-spirited newsgroup postings, the captain of the Exxon Valdez blames evil fish for his ship's oil spillage, and McDonalds customers blame McDonalds for their food making them fat. Oh, wait, that last one really happened.
However, the funniest bit was the Rene Russo 'reveal'...
what about the benefits of a good movie getting good word of mouth, so to speak? Thats in essence free advertising for the theatres. Of course, the movie actually has to be good first. Perhaps this whole instant communication effect will lead to better movies in general.
Run with Scissors!
The problem with movies today is that they are all rated "Two Thumbs Up!". From now on, I only watch movies rated two and a half thumbs up or more.
S.
I give you exibit A: Kangaroo Jack. Truely proof that even with a horrible premise, script and cast, marketing can rake in a lot of suckers. Although the production cost was $60 million. Total in the DVD sales and a sack of bees becomes marketing gold.
wtf?
Faster communications may cause flops to post lower box office numbers than ever seen before, but the fact is most people diverted from seeing the flop will end up still going to see another movie with their date on the opening Friday night. In the end, the industry doesn't lose anything, there's just a redistribution of the week's movie revenues. Every studio will have it's share of duds, so in time it all comes out in the wash.
The loser here is the marketing people. The underlying message is that since word-of-mouth is now faster and stronger, a marketing blitz can no longer recover a bad movie. There's no point on wasting the money on marketing when nobody's going to see the movie anyway. Even the producers of Gigli recognized that, as they canceled all ads for the movie after opening weekend and used the already paid for ad time to promote movies that still had a chance.
The judges hit the gong, the embarassed loser is escorted off the stage, and another act comes out...
People in the US actually TEXT MESSAGE in the first place?
Color me suprised.
Unlike with our friends at the RIAA, they won't be able to buy legislation to prop up their failing business model.
Who's to say...?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The rest of the world blames lame movies and high prices. SCO blames Linux.
http://www.tuxrocks.com/
Yes movies are getting worse and the last time I was at the movies it cost $50 for two people. Two adult tickets for $15 each and the remainder for two large (32oz) drinks a small box of popcorn and a box of Goobers. I'm not kidding, it did cost $50! So I say goodbye movie industry and over priced theaters. Why pay $50 when I can pay $4.99 for two movies for two nights on DVD? I don't have to be body searched for "contraban" Pepsi and candy either. Anyway movies are pretty bad and that J-Lo movie can burn.
The marketing for Charlies Angles 2 in the UK was hilarious. There were two distinct styles of ads, one which urged people to see it early "to be one of the first", and one which urged people to go see it with a large groups of friends because they'd enjoy it more. It was so transparent that they wanted people to see it early before someone warned them not to bother and see it in a large group so one person wouldn't warn all their friends. I loved the original film and I was looking forward to the sequel, but those ads pretty much told me (a) it sucked and (b) the studio KNEW it sucked.
Would you be giving away the end or be commenting on the quality of the movie?
Hearly. That figure was just for the Early US only box office. Add in the international take, and the the take as they rent it to cable and network, and then the DVD and VHS sales, the US boxoffice that is still dribbling in, and all of the merchandiding tie-ins that came out (which more than paid for any promotion costs of the movie) and they will end up having made hundreds of millions on that turkey; a movie that they themselves admit was bad but regret that people were able to spread the word that it was bad as quickly as they did.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yikes, it makes me wonder what "carefully crafted marketing image" they were going for with Gigli. I knew it was bad without having to see it, and without having anyone tell me so. The commercials for it are nothing more than sequences of mediocre content-free scenes that show the major players. I can't remember if they alluded to a story or not. Usually in movie commercials they show some scenes that are at least interesting.
As far as I can tell, the "carefully crafted market image" was "See how charming Ben Affleck and J-Lo are, in these example scenes which clearly show them speaking miscellaneous words! You can see many more such scenes in the full movie!"
I wouldn't blame Gigli on texting. If they wanted to lure audiences into the theaters, they shouldn't have shown Affleck in the commercials.
Obviously, which I granted in my original post. But what we need to understand is 1) they could give two shits if the /. community is kind to them, and 2) the general geek lobby doesn't gain any credibility by turning any story about movies or music into a personal rights debate.
And that's what it comes down to. You have 20,000 flaming idiots on this site who don't read the actual article, reading instead the inflammatory titles posted by (invariably) michael. From this they garner that the industry is certainly attempting to steal their rights to text message someone, when this is preposterous and false.
The actual situation is that some poor exec is wishing for the good old days when they could make money of a shitty movie by promo'ing it. That's all. His job is to make money - his job is now harder. Allowing the poor bastard to be wistful for a moment without calling him a Nazi wouldn't kill us, would it?
Bottom line is I stand by my original point - save the flaming and foaming at the mouth for when something actually happens, stop crying "wolf"/"chicken little," and wait until something actually happens to bitch about the **AA. Or at least until the next SCO story.
And no, I don't need more **AA links. I read them when they come out. I'm no **AA fan (particularly Jack Valenti), but a little objectivity wouldn't kill us as a whole.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
People have opinions, people share opinions, and if they can do it quicker than before, they will. If new movies didn't blow then they wouldn't have this problem. The movie/entertainment industry needs to realize they are subject to the same rules as any other company that is selling something. If a product sucks then it won't sell.
I say that we blame TV/Radio/Internet for having to listed to the MPAA bitch. (Slashdot excluded of course)
I promise you I am quieter than those slobs with the 5 gallon jug of popcorn and the candy wrappers. Nothing like the krinkle (sp?) of plastic and paper during a movie.
Oh, and the watch does not beep. I like silence too.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Hollywood is looking for any kind of lame excuse for it's crappy movies rather than admit that they are tapped out for new ideas. How many new movies lately are truly original? Most are re-makes, sequels, or cheap crappy knock offs of other movies.
then people wouldn't be texting each other to tell each other how bad Gigli blew.
Now only if we could get the MPAA and RIAA to realize what the rest of the planet understands.
Shitty product = no one buying it.
How hard is that to understand?
don't want people to know that the movie is shitty, let them pay and find out that they didnt get what their money is worth right? sounds to me like they're complaining that texting is making it harder to rip people off, boo hoo.
Red Hat is for people who hate Windows, FreeBSD is for people who love Unix.
www.putertech.net
You know, I had this weird feeling the other night when that bluish-purple glowing portal opened up in my bathroom. I know now that I have obviously stumbled into the Bizzaro dimension because there is no way that I could have possibly read an article in which the movie industry just blamed text-messaging for their shrinking market in any kind of rational universe. If somebody knows when the portal home is due to open please give me a shout-out so I can escape this place.
The logic of the MPAA argument is so flawed I don't even know where to begin. I suppose the only choice they have to save their shrinking industry is to press congress to pass laws against people saying anything about Movies. I am sure that there is something in the DMCA that would allow them to extend their IP rights to include "opinions" of a given film to also be included under the copyright, and thus prohibit the discussion of any film currently in theaters, or in print for DVD, or still in existence.
It is all of our responsibilities to protect Hollywood, or something.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Actually I had someone from the Washington Post ask me that, when I had said something nice about a DVD. So I think that the press is aware that this is happening. Anyway with the economy being soft, and $10,000 being a nice amount of money. You'll be seeing more of this "astroturfing".
The rule of thumb in the industry is that a film must make 3 times it's production cost at the box office TO BREAK EVEN. Now, 360 million is streching it - cost of promotion and prints for this film was probably about 60-80 million domestic, meaning that to break even was about 300-320 million (120 million budget x 2, + 60-80 million.)
Remember, the studios only collect about half of box office gross - the rest goes to the theatre chains. As a result, if Hulk made 130 million at the box office, the studios only got 65 million. With the costs of prints and advertising at about 60-80 million (probably a low figure) Hulk is losing about 115-135 million at this point (-120 cost + 65 box office to studio = 55 + 60-80 p&a).
Now, for the nit-pickers in the audience, true, if the studio and the distributor are one and the same, the studio gets to collect part of that 60 million prints and advertising, but the end result is that the Hulk needed to be a super-mega-blockbuster (along the lines of Titanic) to earn the cost back.
Break-even is the holy grail at the box office today - very few films surpass break even. Instead, the real money comes with cable, pay per view, syndication, and licensing/spin-offs. Get the movie to pay for itself at the box office, and use the great sales as advertising for DVD sales, etc.
The big problem for studios is that they need to make their money back faster - they need films that can open big for a few weekends, because there's no room for a film to build an audience anymore. The only way to open big is to make films with a built-in audience (ie, comic book properties, remakes, or TV spinoffs), or with big stars. As a consequence, they're locked into this death spiral of bigger films that need to make more and more money back in a shorter and shorter span.
There's even strategy for opening shitty movies - advertise the hell out of it to pack in as many people on the opening weekend before word gets out that it sucks. If you don't believe me, ask any marketing exec or producer in the business.
Oh, and one last thing. Remember how the Hulk is losing about $125 million right now? This is why you ask for a cut of GROSS profits, not NET profits. Anyone who was foolish enough to sign for a cut of the net is getting NOTHING right now. Someone who is in for a cut of the gross gets money, even if the studio hasn't made their money back yet. For example, on the HULK, Marvel had gross participation, so they still got money.
...at least we know there will be fodder for MST3K for years to come!!
Boy! I am glad to go to the movies with a Philipino friend, who has mastered the art of sneaking into a movie without a ticket. At least, when I see gems such as Legally Blonde 2, Fast & Furious 2, T-3, Bruce Almighty or Looking for Nemo, I have the thorough satisfaction of not having to part a hefty $12 to find out they are trash (well, maybe not Looking for Nemo).
Am I missing something here? Maybe I'm just the wrong side of 25, but why should txting have any impact? If I'm willing to tap out "this movie sucks" on a 12-button keypad, then I'm just as likely to have made a phone call to the same effect in the pre-SMS era. What I can see is that now every teenager has a mobile phone, they'd be quicker to communicate with each other whether by txt or voice.
But if the MPAA is worried about the effect of SMS texting on ticket sales, just wait until video messaging takes off. Then you'll be able to see for yourself how bad the movie before buying a ticket.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
There has to ba a law against the blatant acts of consumers expressing an opinion which interrupts the fundamental right of corporations to milk consumers of every last hard earned cent.
The right to make monopoly profits and distort the operation of the market until the end of time without adding to the collective knowledge and advancement of the human race must be upheld at all costs. The regurgitation of lowest common denominator "entertainment" which provides nothing new, challenging or interesting should provide at least a 200% return, regardless of how overbudget a piece of crap is, is fundamental to the health of the western economy.
Expect larger political donations from the movie industry soon as they are obviously lagging behind the RIAA.
Stopping myself...Abort (core dumped)
...that I don't have any friends.
______________________
Sigs are insigificant.
Whew, when I read the post and it talked about "texting," I thought it was going to say that the MPAA had determined that the text in BOOKS was eroding their movie profits!
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Those who forget the past are doomed
What about those people who walk out of a movie, going "wow that was cool!" and text messaging/calling all their friends with cell phones telling them "You MUST see this movie, NOW!"
I thought that the biggest market (and hence the biggest flopping ground) for these films would be in the US. Well text messaging isn't exactly ubiquitous stateside like it is in Europe. Plus this article is printed in a British paper, which would imply that they're talking about box-office failures in the UK. What's the excuse for their failures in America then? People talking more loudly about how Gigli sucks?
Now they're trying to blame texting/sms on poor Movie and CD sales. We'll the only solution there is to produce better products. And IMHO I think the press did more damage to GiGi than texting. It was all over the news on how bad it was, for days.
I suppose now the push for cell phone blockers in the theatres will be pushed to quiet the storm of "this movie sucks" to others in the hopes that those people are in line to see the next showing. Instead of quieting the barrage of ringers that have come about in recent months.
2003? They should have hopped on the fucking cluetrain four years ago.
1. Have 2 married actors (ben and j. lo) write and star in a movie. 2. Market it as a comedy. 3. Profit!!
MPAA blames YOU!
Seriously... why do certain industries get to make ridiculous claims like this (MPAA, RIAA)? Why do certain industries feel that their ancient business models should work for all eternity (MLB)?
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
I only avoid movies where they use another finger.
Help fight continental drift.
It's important to remember here that the studio execs are businessmen, not artists. Most of them wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them in the ass, repeatedly. If they can identify a target demographic, and then create a marketing hype around it, they have discovered that they can almost guarantee a profit, regardless of the movie's actual quality. Unfortunately (for them), they are discovering that their scheme relies on imperfect information, and as the Internet and other forms of communication freedom reduce their market to a perfect information system they are no longer going to be able to use tricks to compete. Without those tricks, there are only two ways to succeed -- laws and quality. The scary thing is that (as I already pointed out), they don't have the talent to compete on quality. So, expect to see them try to push through laws.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I guess it must texting's fault I haven't seen any action lately since that one night I got really drunk and passed out while doing it with this chick. She must've texted every other woman in the world.
These viral marketing people have been around for a while. I give them a few months to catch up with this text messaging thing and find some way to use it to there advantage.Hopefully the people who pay attention will continue to see it for what it is.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I didn't see any of those movies CAUSE THEY ALL SUCKED!
clifgriffin > blog
Imagine you could use SMS to tell ALL your friends that the film you've just seen is fatastic, it'll increase its sales, sure.
But, it's so dificult to say it lately!
I've never even heard of Gigli. But now that I have I'll be sure not to see it. Thanks, guys.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Technology today empowers every person that has access to it. There was a time when the movie and recording industry used to create decent products, and their first goal was to please those that actually forked over the cash the industries depend on. Now, its about pleasing the stockholders, and hoodwinking the general public, that same general public they rely on to keep their industries successful. While the article in question isn't really anything but an observation, it remains to be seen what these industries will do to keep their revenue streams up in the face of an ever increasingly empowered and educated public.
I've gone to a different cinema at
a multiplex for the 09:00 show based on what
people have said coming out of the 07:00...
They aren't saying they are going to war against text messaging, or communications.. they are just saying somsething that is most likely true: the reason they are not grossing as high a profit as they would have is because of instant communications. They aren't saying it's a war with communication, just stating that it's a factor that affects their business model.
Though I'm sure none of us would be surprised if they DID try to make communication about a movie illegal, that's not what they are doing.
Think about it.. it IS true... instant communication affects their business model, which involves getting as many people in on opening weekend on pure hype...
If they didn't make such shite films, maybe they wouldn't have this problem.
Message to Hollywood: START MAKING BETTER FILMS YOU IDIOTS!
Here in California, it costs $9 to $10 to see a movie. And if I pay that much and see a movie that sucks, I'm pissed. I'm more likley to solicit opinions from my friends and read some quick reviews on the net now, versus a few years ago when movies were $6.00. It also makes me more likely to rent movies than to go see them.
oh yeah.. europeans love to hate our cars and our politics, but they can't get enough of our lousy 'entertainment.' movies, tv, music... the cheesier it is they more they love it. my advice to the MPAA on movies like Gigli is: skip the US theaters, take the crap it straight to europe before they find it on grokster.
I remember as a kid in the 70's all my friends calling me if they saw a film that was a turkey. How is texting any different?
The movie industry needs to stop making excuses and make some better movies instead.
"Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image."
Odd, when I was at school the word scam was spelled s.c.a.m not i.m.a.g.e.
Ebert said that Star Trek X sucked, and well, he gave away the best part of the movie in his review. If the MPAA needs to gag anyone, it is him.
Charlies Angels by the way was a great fantastic movie. If you don't want to see Diaz riding a mechanical bull in a skirt, then you are watching for the wrong reasons.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Hey, That's insulting to three year olds! :-)
Give them credit, their analysis does try to hold suckiness of the movie constant** and analyze the differences in audience statistics over time. (Of course, the economy and thus disposable income are radically different than 5 years ago, but pay to attention to the man behind the curtain.)
;)
What really seems to be teeing them off though, is that their business model is no longer valid. Used to be, if they spent enough on advertising, people wouldn't figure out that a movie sucked until after they'd seen it. But the mob has gotten too smart for them. Economies operate efficiently when all participants have perfect information. Now that movie goers have better information, film distributors can no longer misappropriate utility from movie consumers by flooding the market with false info claiming that a sucky movie is good. Boo hoo.
Did all that utility that the marketers were misappropriating evaporate? No. The consumers still have it. They'll use it to rent a DVD of something that doesn't suck instead. So, like, don't sweat it.
**They'd do better to ensure that the suckiness of movies decreased, rather than holding it constant.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The fact that viewers spread the word of mouth faster could actually lead to more bad movies!!! Take a look at the box office... It's not like Gigli was replaced in the top 10 by the latest Almodovar.
I bet those SMS messages are along the line of "GIGLI SUX!!!1" or "X2 = COOL CGI", not "the paintings in the sitting room of the spaceship in the original Solaris by Tarkovski were the Seasons by Bruegel, symbolising the cycle of life which is one of the major underlying themes of the movie"...
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
They wouldn't gag people, they know full-well if they gagged people they would just reverse-engineer the gags and remove them
What is actually going to happen is that in order to buy a ticket you will be forced to sign an NDA.
(To that tune by 'Heart') Everybody sing!: "All I wanna do - is sue the pants of you-oo....."
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Hulk (2003) .... Betty Ross
nuff' said.
it must be $hit.
So if the SMS phenomenom has been been labelled a movie killer, what could they possible attribute to a movies success?? Surely not SMS's, which could just as easily promote a great movie. Nah, it only goes one way right? After all, texting is only used for flaming stellar productions and is obviously one of the Five Points of Evil on the Draconin Pentagram of Consumer Wickness and Product Debauchery. ...Yet another industry that habitually cannot take responsibility for the turds that miss the toilet on their way out. Oh, and don't blame the syndicated critics who flamed and blindsided this movie seven ways to Sunday. After all, you need them to prop your next weak release.
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Propaganda is bad, right? A political entity takes advantage of its special position of control over the media to spread manipulative misinformation for its benefit.
Paid advertising is rarely anything but propaganda.
I just had the horrific vision of a theatre full of people all strapped down like Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork Orange and being forced to watch Gigli.
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
This is a good point, and if it hadn't been posted already, I would have.
This seems to be exactly the reason that Hollywood doesn't bother to make good movies, but concentrates on hype instead. They don't care about the people who watch the movie after a month, they only care about the number of people who watch it soon after it's been released, because it makes them more money.
that the movie industry can no longer fool the masses into paying for movies that should have died on the cutting room floor. Maybe now studios will consider spending money on movies that will be worth watching instead of blowing it all on big name err.. talent and overblown ad campaigns. Or not. Making the free flow of information a scapegoat for diminishing profits is certainly not the answer, but then we are talking about an industry that brought us great films like 'Daredevil' and 'Batman Returns again and again and again... (I wouldnt mind seeing a few more Aliens movies though..)
TallGreen CMS hosting
Actually, I think jokes aside they have a valid point here. Along with text messaging you've got email, cell phones, web forums, newgroups, etc, etc. That's a enormous network that didn't exist 5 or ten years ago (at least it wasn't widespread), and it's moving faster than Hollywood's marketing.
Before it probably took days for the realization that a movie stunk to sink in with the public. Hollywood marketing campaigns slowed the process enough the studios could recap their expenses before that happened. Then anything afterwards was profit. Now, the cat's out of the bag within hours and the studio can't 'buy their gross' as the artical put it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Mobile communications devices will be banned in movie theatres. You'll have to walk through a detector to enter the theater, or maybe you'll get patted down by minimum wage security staff. Authorities will cite "disturbing fellow moviegoers" as the reason for the ban.
Another possibility is that the authorities invest in communications jamming devices in theaters. Can't send a message if there is no signal.
Take off your shoes!
Every film out this year has been a remake, sequel, prequel, adaptation or blaitent copy.
Hulk - bad adaptation
Charlies Angels - sequel to adaptation/remake
X-men 2 - sequel to adaptation/remake
Matrix 2 - sequel
T3 - a remake or a sequel to a sequel
Italian Job - remake that isnt needed
etc.
I would start with having phone companies scan text messages for film titles and delete them. You can then move on to standing outside the cinema ready to arrest anyone on their phone talking about the film. Also try hijacking text messages and replacing them with adverts for the film.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Is that someone sends me a text message about that new movie Marci X with Damon Wayans and Lisa Kudrow so I dont' have to go see 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."
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.
Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone. The movie sucks. But if no one finds out, they'll all come see it!
If Hollywood actually made good, quality movies and droves went to see them, would the movie industry then say that the success of the movies is because of text messaging (i.e., people find out quicker that the movie is actually good)?
Just as with the music industry. If you put crap into the machine, crap comes out, and few people want to spend their money on crap.
Anyone noticed that there is nothing to see at the movies. What happened to Hollywood this year. Did the good movies all go on strike, or maybe we were all tired of the BS politics about the war from the "stars". Hey movies suck these days. Hollywood sucks and maybe we need to start shifting the blam from technology, whiich does not suck, and other crap back to the fact that movies suck. Can no one be accountable anymore if the f things up? I don't do something right. I get fired or talked to, but maybe next time I can just blame it on the bad movie I saw last night and that I can't think straight and then maybe Hollywood will have to fix it since my manager says it effects my performance. good god! Everyone in Hollywood is stupid, and I mean that.
David Vasta iSeries(AS/400) Admin & Junkie
The Hulk was marketed as an action flick, which it wasn't. Maybe if they had marketed it to people who like drama and character interaction it would have done better. Heck, during the overly long escape sequence I was thinking "Come on, get it over already, this isn't a damn action flick". I think Ang Lee did a good job. You just had to know what to expect when you were going in.....
-- Argel
It seems to me that well written comedies are easy money makers.
Firstly, casting don't cost much. You can often get away with smaller, lower paid stars. Apart from maybe Jim Carrey, most comedy actors fall outside of "A-list".
Secondly, they have reasonably low budgets on special effects etc.
Thirdly, they work as date movies, maximising audience (whether romantic comedies or gross out).
"I hope you know that by reading a book, and going outside, you may lose your posting privileges."
Go easy on the guy. It is clear that he has never been on Slashdot before. Evidence: "me and my woman". I rest my case.
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Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.
For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:
The US Constitution
clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:
Findlaw's Tretise of US copyright law.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
i didn't even need a text message to know that Gigli would suck, but anyway, i think that text messaging is important and that the MPAA should embrace this technology. If used properly, the MPAA can save hundreds of millions of dollars preventing from crap movies from coming out.
I do quote:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Maybe you should read your references instead of using a search tool.
Nice.. How long before they take a page from the porn industry, and we have movE bots flooding us with "movie spam" about how good some movie is.
Consider it, they're down to blaming the audience now..
Ah yes.. soon your IM handle will have to be private, visiting a public chat forum will undoubtly lead to IM spam...I wish I didn't have such a pessimistic outlook on this, but I think you can put a clock to this one, if it's not already happening.
Hollywood has always had two different approaches to promoting movies - if they know the movie is weak they will go for the broadest release possible AND hype the heck out of the movie prior to the openning (ads, talkshow circuit, publicity stunts, etc.)
If they think they have a quality movie on their hands they will do a limited release and allow momentum to build by word of mouth.
Text messaging undermines the first approach, but helps the second.
I guess they will just have to change their ways and focus on quality!!!
Course the /. crowd jumped all over this, took it waaaay out of context, and posted a dozen posts saying text messeging is going to be banned.
Take your own advice and RTFA.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
It's scary that what people seem to be missing is that the MPAA knew that people were sending text messages saying "this movie stinks." I don't remember seeing any disclaimer when I got my phone saying anything about logging of text messages. (I didn't see anything saying they wouldn't either though...)
Let's suppose for a second that the cellular companies have to log all text messages to comply with CALEA. (quite possible) It's one thing for the govt. to require them to keep this data. It's something else for them to share that information with organizations other than law enforcement.
The fact is, the MPAA shouldn't have had a clue that anyone sent a text message via any phone period. The fact that they do shows that cellular companies are freely sharing this data with 3rd parties. I'm no lawyer, but I'd be willing to bet that's illegal.
-darkphyber-
I remember when my friends and I went out to see the long awaited Highlander 2 on opening night. We didn't go to the first showing, though.
As we stood behind the ropes waiting to go in, they let the first showing out. As they walked by, many of the departing crowed yelled at us to go home, that it was awful, that we'd never be able to enjoy Highlander again if we watched this new piece of crap.
I don't think anyone left the line, but next time I hear a reaction that bad, I will. My God how I wish I could have those two hours back....
Just think, those same text messages could be saying "Wow gotta see it next show 930" just as easily as "Crummy loser save your $". Word of mouth has always worked both ways--remember Blair Witch Project? So go make some good movies: Hollyweird, the choice is yours!
The content of the movie you are about to see is protected by copyright. Duplication in any form, including verbal description to your friends, is punishable by fines of up to $250,000.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I haven't been "texted" about any movies; but every reviewer has panned Gigli.
The Hulk didn't appeal to me because... well... I used to watch the series when I was a kid back in the 70s. I guess I got my Hulk fix.
Charlie's Angels? Don't blame texting. Blame JPEG. :) I mean, if that's what you want, why sit through some lame movie for 2 hours? Sex? Yeah, we got sex. We got air and water too. You gotta package it better, or maybe... (gasp) add some plot. Charlie's Angels is to sex what municipal is to water. That, and most of today's moviegoers don't remember Disco first hand, and therefore don't give a rats rear end about Farrah or any of those other now pruny women.
Now, Gigli? I dunno, except that apparently it sucked so bad that it created a persistant low pressure system over the eastern US, giving us unusually high rainfall totals this Summer.
And despite all that rain, nobody wanted to go to the cinema. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This site isn't just read by geeks anymore. The last proof of that can be found by going to Google News and checking out how many stories from Slashdot they carry. For good or bad, this is site has a pretty big impact in the media now. They don't call it slashdotting for nothing.
The actual situation is that some poor exec is wishing for the good old days when they could make money of a shitty movie by promo'ing it.
Having said the above, I agree completely with you here. It was a nicer world for those in power when the only media were mass media, and the suckers couldn't communicate amongst themselves very well. Now, they might just have to make a good product instead of giving their marketing droids a lot of money.
Note that you can also say the reverse is true: The word on a good film will get around even if there isn't much marketing power behind it (Hero was a film that I heard about almost only by word of mouth; Secretary is another).
In a capitalist society, companies will always do anything they can get away with to get us to buy their product.
It's the job of government job to counterbalance that - including educating us to distinguish good info vs marketing as well as promoting the former.
Cool thread.
Crap movies will get bad reviews very quickly and so a lot of movies dont even make a profit - the studios reduce budgets so only films with good plots get made - no junk like Dumb and Dumber'er
Most movies become good and texting helps them flourish.....
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
The article is invalid because it correlates an effect with an unscientific cause.
Also interestingly the article does not evaluate the "postive buzz" that text messaging generates. An interesting phenomena in movies today is low-budget, sometimes offbeat films with new stars make a lot of money. (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Monsoon Wedding, Y tu Mama Tambien). More films are crossing the border from "just art" to commercial. Can we attribute their success precisely to the same "buzz" generated by "wireless messaging"?
According to me the problem is because people are less likely to "trust" anything then ever before today. Most information you need is freely availaible and with a multiplicity of sources (internet, tv, cellphones/sms, personal communication) providing the same content with a different flavour it is hard to escape a negative or positive buzz. All this information has an effect of improving the decisive abilities of moviegoer.
Also it's not only about a "bloke seeing a movie". Information also helps business decisions. So practically the producer of a movie has the all the information about the "target demographic" before producing a movie or a music cd. However I guess information is not being properly used by the producers of movies since instead of asking fundamental questions about "why a movie should appeal" before starting a movie they have started modelling movies on perceived factors like star appeal/graphics/action etc.
Personally the last thing I want to do is go and see a movie being bashed about in the media, fail to enjoy it and get a "i told you so" from my friends.
Sheesh.
It appears that the MPAA is not realizing that even without SMS on cellphones, people ARE going to find out why a movie is subpar just from reading sites like RottenTomatoes.com or AintItCool.com (despite the fact Harry Knowles has been wine and dined by the industry his site can frequently rip a movie to confetti and smaller very quickly).
Besides, look at two of the truly big hits of this summer (Finding Nemo with over US$320 million in revenues and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with over US$260 million in revenues): both movies succeeded massively because they both are the type of movies that audiences WANT to see again and again for the sheer enjoyment of movies. It appears almost every other film has seriously missed the mark in terms of repeat patronage.
I think the Walt Disney Company should definitely thank its moviegoers this summer for turning Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl into such huge hits. =)
Finding Nemo of course had superb reviews from newspapers and TV reviewers that convinced moviegoers to see the movie more than once. Pirates of the Caribbean found its success not because of its reviews (which were generally positive but somewhat mixed), but because moviegoers were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed the film and it was this positive reaction that resulted in considerable repeat business.
I think there should be a karma credit for being ahead of the /. editorial curve. This is about the fourth time this has happened. grumble grumble grumble
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Reading through the comments, I haven't yet seen anyone who 'gets it'.
If the MPAA is admitting that word-of-mouth (about how bad movies are) is hurting sales, they are countering their own claim that "piracy" == "massive loss of sales".
Just to throw-in my own opinion, it's ridiculous to say that text messaging is to blame. Terminator and Terminator 2 were very good movies... Terminator 3 wasn't, no matter what technology is available to spread the word.
Matrix = good = Big Money.
Matrix 2 = poor = Little Money
(Please don't ask me to explain Titanic, I really can't.)
I've seen far too many terrible movies comming out, that I've resigned myself to renting them on DVD, which is far cheaper, as long as you are willing to wait.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A friend, who was a professional movie reviewer, told me to beware of any movie that doesn't offer advance screenings for movie reviewers. It's usually the sign of a expensive turkey when the marketing people try to keep the film away from the reviewers for as long as possible.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
No Republicans in Hollywood?
Ronald Reagan
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Actually I hold in my hand a list of 57 Republicans in Hollywood. And I will not rest until each one has been investigated by the Slashdot Unslashdottian Activities Committee.
1) First half of the movie was two damn slow.
2) Muliple frames of parallel action break the flow of the film.
3) Too much Bruce Worry, not enough Hulk Smash!
4) Absorbing Man knockoff villan sucked.
Coming to a theatre near you...
Jason vs Aliens vs Predator vs GODZILLA vs J-LO's gargantuan booty
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Oddly, this is pretty much the reason the (in)famous movie critic at the New Yorker, Pauline Kael, disparaged the original Star Wars: she thought it was far more driven by visuals than by story, and that it could set a bad precedent that could last generations, if studios took its success as a spur to focus ever more on topping one another in the effects department and let story go completely by the wayside.
I'll be honest--if I'd read Kael's review when I was growing up (I was 10 when Star Wars came out in 1977), I'd have been incensed. But when I saw the movie again for the 20th anniversary release, I was shocked at just how bad the script was. I know this is still blasphemy, but listen to the dialogue objectively sometime--concentrating on it just as a movie, not as an icon. I can all but guarantee it'll be depressing just how leaden the writing is. There's a famous quote from Harrison Ford on the set of that first movie, when he exclaimed, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it."
I will rent (or DL) Gigli out of sheer curiosity because I find it hard to believe that it can be worse than Scientology's poster boy's heap of dung.
I asked a friend who went to see Gigli (they just started dating so he's doing all he can for some tail) and Maid in Manhanttan (sp?) with another girl and he says both were just as bad.
This worse movie stuff is more due to people paying JLo back than how bad it really is.
Last movie I paid full price was Mr.Wrong with professional lez Ellen and it wasnt just bad, it was painful to watch.
zack
I'd vote for banning that from theaters, too. But that makes theaters (lots of) money, whereas cellphones don't... so it's unlikely to happen.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I can categorically state that I didn't need an SMS to know that Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels 2 were crap. I didn't even need a review of Hulk, I could tell from the trailers.
Wait for it to come out on DVD is the best move. DVD releases usually follow about 6 months later then you can pick it up from Netflix. If you like it you can buy it and be happy. If it sucks you will have 6 months to find out. That is my theory anyway.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
This is total garbage. If it were true, then text messaging should BOOST the sales of good movies.
how is this any different than "word of mouth" spreading that a movie sucks?
incase you failed to realise, we do infact have our own movie industry
Paedo-scat porn doesn't count.
Are they serious? What's next, banning the audience as a whole? We gonna get this press release next:
The MPAA has now decreed that only movie industry professionals can now view movies. The general public is now forbidden from watching movies.
What a bunch of morons! roflmfao
How can this be linked to texting? If it were huge dropoff between the first and second screening, sure, but with a whole week in between perhaps some other technologies are implicated. Some of the likely culprits include: newspapers
telephones, television, email, web reviews, and snail mail. Hell, with a whole week to do it, you can pretty much warn the entire country off of a crap movie by face-to-face word of mouth.
If a movie is so bad that people are going to be sending SMS messages during it, it's probably bad enough for them to leave the movie. This sounds like a really weak attempt by studio asshats to blame poor performance on an aspect of youth culture they don't understand.
Idiocy is rampant in our country...when did the victem culture move over to the boardroom. It's no wonder that so many businesses fail if this is the type of logical and abstract thinking being taught to future exacts while they're at school.
is that the gig is up.
1970's,80's,90's...Used to be that you could market a sucky movie to death and garner decent profits from all the sheeple that rush to see it based on that marketing.
Fast forward to today...enter Screenit.com, IMDB, (insert one of tons of movie review sites here).com. A huge percent of folks are online now, and they are learning about and using these sites to make better choices. So what's the problem?? LMAO (from the article):
"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."
Translation for the double-speak impaired: "We used to could lie faster than the truth could come out so it didn't matter whether the movie sucked or not, we could still make money."
Cry me a river you arrogant dork.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Fuckers
Maybe the movie industry will bust like the dotcoms did. I know this is a bit of wishful thinking. But is this possible? Most movies don't even break even at the domestic box office anymore. They have to make their money via foriegn audiences, DVD sales, and video rentals. The industry is dying because the business model is rapidly changing.
One of the first lessons of finance is that it's better to invest $10,000 with low risk in order to make $20,000, than to invest $100 million to make $150 million with high risk.
I think the only reason people invest in Hollywood is because the industry has "sex appeal". So if your Howard Hughes, or some other rich millionaire playboy you can invest in movies, race horses, or casinos. However, maybe, the big business of entertainment is starting to die in this country.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
If I go to a movie and spend almost $13CDN thats right $13 on a fuckign shitty movie I have every right to tell people it sucks and save them a retarded amount of money. Make a good movie and I'll tell everyone I know to go and see it. Fuck you coproprate loosers. Stick it to the man.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No, they are indeed talking about the USA, cell phone with text message usage has apparently finally hit enough of a critical mass among US teens (the ones with enough disposable money for movies also. . . are the ones who can afford cell phones) to make this kind of difference.
High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash (registration required) is what the shorter article you saw apppears to be based on.
I'm wondering why this doesn't seem to be happening in Europe. Are the export-only movie versions with enhanced sex and violence that much more entertaining?
In any case, I think Hollywood had better get the message that their only recourse is to start making better movies... probably starting with finding better ways to select movies. (previously covered on /.)
Tech Public Policy stuff
If only the MPAA and RIAA collectively had one giant anus. Then I'd be able to build a huge truck-sized glove made out of razor blades to fist them both to death.
Hopefully, in 20 years, people with Maya will be making feature length original movies on their desktops.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The MPAA has just created a new "End User License Agreement" for all movies released to the general public.
The License Agreement states that all viewers will remain in confidence about said movies and will not mention, speak or talk about the movie in anyway to anyone until the DVD is released to the public until after it's third edition or "Special Release Edition" DVD release.
When asked about how they would uphold such a license agreement, MPAA spokesman, Rich Taylor stated that they will be encoding each movie with a technology that will allow each viewer only faint memories of the movie once they leave the theatre. Asked if the technology will help sales of the movie and ensure box office numbers that are in-line with their estimations for a movie, Taylor stated: "our goal is to ensure that each and every movie makes money. When people use technology to tell their friends the movie is not good, we'll combat negative reviews by using our technology that will make it difficult for them to remember a movie all together, thus this will limit the scope of bad reviews and bad vibes about a movie which will negativetly impact the numbers."
Asked if he believed this new technology could be seen as a way of controlling public opinion. Taylor stated, "if they can't remember a movie, that's not the point. The point is that they paid for a ticket, and were delivered a product. We are protecting our intellectual property and ensuring that others who have not seen the product will pay for it and we will not lose revenue."
Asked what the penalty will be for sharing memories of their product, Taylor remarked, "We take theft very seriouslly, if we find that someone is sharing our product and breaking the EULA which they agreed with when they purchased a ticket, we will pursue them through all legal channels and prosecute them.".
If you look hard its hard not to miss how many movies are rehashes of older french films, it seams like script writers have holidays in Paris and go WOW, theres an idea while watching TV.
But before trashing euro movies or aussie ones, lets just to a full statistical analysis of some 100,000 movies and do a full spread of good vs bad., before making conclusions.
Oh and btw, not one disney film is original, all stolen stories.... even SHREK!!!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
In Hollywood, execs don't believe a movie succeeded, unless it pulls in THREE TIMES the amount of money it cost to make. 10 years ago, when almost every movie cost less than the average actors salaries these days, 11 million would be a great amount of money to make. But now, SO many movies are breaking the 100 million dollar barrier. Trust me, The Hulk did make a ton of money, but most of it was release weekend sales. The weekend after, it was knocked off by whoever. Honestly, this summer sucked for movies, and The Hulk was by far the biggest disappointment of them all.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
when technology is used to reveal truth, it is shunned by big media....
not supprised. WHY OH WHY IS THE MPAA STARTING TO SOUND LIKE THEM GOD DAMN SCIENTOLOGISTS
I remember a few years ago when Sony got busted for having bogus ads that showed "candid" audience exit interviews--you know, the video clips where they show "real" people saying "it was great!" As it turned out, many of the people shown were employees from Sony Picture Studios here in LA, totally faking it for the camera. I think it was for Godzilla. Apparently Sony Japan became very ticked about this.
Spend less on marketing, because obviously it's less effective now. (Or spend a whole lot more on it).
I think the effective route is spend more on good writers, actors, directors, cimetographers, chorographers, editors, etc.
This should be the movie industry's wet dream. Word of mouth spreading quickly. You can put together a relatively inexpensive film with high-quality staff and a few pennys in marketing and instead of a "drop off" you see a massive ramp up as more and more people find out about your film.
Of course this model is completely backwards and opposite for most/all corperations. But this model is how small business works. I think as communications between people strengthens we will (hopefully) see the word of mouth effect on business and the economy, and those who take advantage of it will be able to reap the rewards.
But the MPAA is not known for their ability to accept that the marketplace is dynamic and changing every minute. Maybe it's cheaper for them just to smash down on everyone with regulations? Not sure on this. Seems like giant marketing staffs and armies of lawyers really drains the coffers.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I can see why some people didn't get the movie, or weren't into it, but it was very good. The effects were good, the plotline was great, the character development was great, the action scenes were inspiring.
I am really glad that IM is being used to get the word out on films that are not worth seeing. I think that it is a great step forward for popular entertainment to know not to go see a bomb.But it is too bad that people are so lost when it comes to parsing the simplest, most straightforward of plots. The problem is that we may not get more quality film due to this ability to get early reviews from non-media sources. Instead, we may get more formulaic plots, designed to please the twitch-viewer crowd-leaders that go to the theaters before everyone else.
My God. How in the world did he get such a low user number?!?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
No, text messaging MUST be the reason why less people are seeing movies! I mean, before text messaging, humans really didn't have any kind of communication that they could use to warn their buddies about crappy movies.
Why people are texting each other bad-mouthing the movies?
I think we're back to "Because the movies suck."
The critics and the mass media itself lashed out against "Gigli," not teenagers text-messaging everyone. "Gigli" had worse word-of-mouth before it even hit the theatres than even "Batman & Robin" which Harry Knowles and Aint-It-Cool-News famously destroyed online. Name one other film besides "B&R" that Knowles has massacred effectively on his website? You can't name any. He lashed out against "Scooby Doo" and its stars, but had to admit later on that Matthew Lilliard was impressive as Shaggy (Knowles was spot-on about Freddy Prinz Jr. but that is all-too-easy to predict). For "Gigli" to be ruined by teens and text messaging, they would've had to have gone to the theatres opening week and then spread the virtual bad-word. But the film only grossed a little over $3 million to begin with, and I would wager money the studio itself "asked" its employees to go see the film that weekend, ala the famous *accusations* against Scientology requiring its members to frequently purchase L. Ron Hubbard books at the bookstores. Hollywood should fess up and admit that they made a lot of turkeys this year and stop trying to find a scapegoat. Next thing you know, they'll be blaming file-trading for their profit losses; oh wait, they already are in those commercials I skip through with my TiVo!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Who needs Jay Sherman when you've got great sites like Every One's a Critic? Since everyone's tastes are different. You can rate the movies you've seen. It then compares your tastes to the tastes of everyone else in the database. Then it gives you a list of people who are the closest to you. So you can get opinions from people that think like you do. Works amazingly well.
that movies play on a billion screens on the first weekend? It used to be that there was a danger of not being able to see a movie on opening weekend, but now that the multiplex has the movie starting every half hour, all the real demand for the movie is satsified in weekend zero, and hence the sharp dropoff??
Or does that make too much sense?
First, banning text messaging. Anti-text-messaging technology will be implemented.
At some point they'll realize people are using cell phones to tell their friends movies suck. Anti-cell-phone technology will be implemented.
And finally, they'll realize people aren't leaving bad movies to go to the bathroom, they're leaving to warn their friends that the movie sucks! Movie patrons will be prevented from getting up during a movie.
Wait. I'd get to see a movie without beeping, ringing, glowing devices going off every few minutes? And people wouldn't be moving all around and getting in the way?
Sounds like paradise, but we all know how it will really be:
People buy tickets, sit down in theater.
45 minutes of previews begin. The theater doors shut and lock. (KAWANG!)
Bad Preview.
Worse Preview.
Moviegoers begin to wonder how these things can possibly get worse.
They get worse.
Anti-cellphone grid engages. Every pager, phone, etc in the theater protests with an annoying beeping sound.
Movie begins.
Moviegoer #1 complains the entire movie that her cell phone doesn't work. She presses buttons on it every few minutes to check for a signal.
Moviegoer #2, an 8 year old child going to the most violent movie of the year with his parents, begins complaining he has to pee. Halfway through the movie, he begins pounding on the entrance door to the lobby. Parents ignore him.
Moviegoer #3 attempts ridiculing the movie. Which would have been entertaining, save for the fact he's an idiot.
Moviegoer #4 periodically yells at #3, telling him to shut up and occasionally threatening him.
All of which is more interesting than the movie itself, which is so horrible the rest of the moviegoers are trying to figure out ways to claw out their eyes.
The movie, Gigli 2, mercifully ends.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
You would be a good candidate for purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge. It has been recently rehabilitated. Road resurfaced. Is under tight security as a landmark. Once you purchase it, you will be allowed to do what you want with it. You can hire one of the electronic toll tag companies to install their system so you can collect tolls on the bridge. You will be free to charge what you want.
I'll sell you the whole bridge, including deed, for $500.
$131 million in earnings on a budget of $120 million?
For a blockbuster, that's ok.
For a non-blockbuster, that's an exception. The fact is that most movies don't make that kind of revenue. And many don't generate a profit. They generate a loss.
So why make movies that lose?
If you don't know this, you are in the same position as the parent poster.
Here's your wakeup.
Who has a stake in the majority of the sub-contractors that help to produce the movie?
The accounting games played by studios has been a well documented and criticised method of ensuring tax losses while still raking in the cash. From generous, non-cash loss deductions, to catering slush funds used to supply "party favors" to cast and crew, to many other methods of skinning the cat, hollyweed has it down to a well-scripted science by now.
Let's leave the accounting games on the side for now. They have already been covered elsewhere by others.
Let's concentrate on the subcontractors. From personal experience, I can tell you of a case where a friend was awarded a $50,000 contract to produce a "record". He was assigned a recording company executive. He was set up in a recording studio. The recording studio billed the record company $1,000 per hour for the engineer. Guess who the engineer was? My friend. Did he see any of this money? No. The belief that his record was going to be produced and sold was enough compensation.
Guess who was a silent "partner" of the recording studio?
That's right, the recording company executive.
Sink in yet?
Just like the doctors who order expensive medical tests, who also happen to own stock in the specific company that they order the medical tests from...
Sink in yet?
There was a story recently on how a music company also owned the company that pressed the cds. And how the music company was complaining on how hard it was to make money, with one of the problems being how much it cost in materials to manufacture a cd...
Sink in yet?
Follow the money. Do the movie studios only own the movie studios? Or do they also have a stake in some of the subcontractors?
Sink in yet?
How is it possible that you are so stupid to believe that the movie studios only made a 9% return on the Hulk?
Uh...both of those movies tanked, well before e-mail and texting were big? Why...for the same reason as Gigli - hey...we got an actor/actress people know - they'll make any script golden.
I guess they don't realize that we are not mindless cattle waiting for whatever they decide to release upon us with dollars in hand.
Or could it just be the lack of responsibility - they can't accept the fact the movie they backed was doomed and should have never been made. Must be the same reason that Hanson CD's aren't selling - it's not that it's bad quailty, it's that damn word-of-mouth, the same reason other CD's are selling and those pesky non-major-company movies and indie bands are growing.
This madness has got to stop...
What is next? " You were thinking the movie might suck and dont want to see it, so therfore we will sue you and force you to go, then talk good about it."
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Thank you! I don't things have changed all that much in 5 years time. Crappy movies were being made. The public is just starting to get sick of them. We're through the looking glass here people.
I dunno how many times I've gone to see a movie based on I like the trailer and walked out, thinking well that movie was ok but nothing like the trailer.
Eg the Hulk trailer pushes big green monster, and lots of action, and the movie was more a drama, and introspective exploration of some poor schmuck who just wanted to be left alone. The opinions of people who have an idea that they're not going for the action, are radically different to people who want lots of green monster smashing things and saving the day.
So theoretically, the movie makers could make the same movie but if they hype it a bit more realistically, then they will not disappoint so many people.
And maybe they could leave a bit more of the lame cgi (die another day) out.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
That's total bullsh-t. I went to the Hulk in *spite* of the fact that I heard it sucked, and it still sucked. Totally sucked!
An interesting point, because IIRC, part of Adam Smith's theory of the free market is that the market is no longer "free" if the flow of information about the products, pricing etc. is restricted. Thus, if Circuit City throws you out of the store for standing in the TV aisle copying down prices (as I have heard sometimes happens), they are making the market not-free, because they have restricted your ability to comparison-shop. They have likely also restricted your desire to ever shop at Circuit City again, but you gotta break a few eggs... In this case, a crap movie can make big box in a few days before everyone figures out it's crap. This is a major H'wood strategy. They are now realizing that it is becoming obsolete. It has not yet trickled in that if they made really good movies, then FAST word-of-mouth would drive their first-weekend box even higher. Dumb asses.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Sounds like they are just coming around the the effects of the communication age.
Quack, quack.
...in the big movie studios. They have been taken over by insane people!!!
That's pretty cool. Did the junk peak in 1997? Are we heading back to quality?
I went to Cleopatra, and was the only one who actually got up and left the theater since that was one really bad and boring movie. Could be that "The Longest Day" was really my cup of tea, especially since there was real German being spoken by the Nazis, with English Subtitles. I've told people I got up and left Cleopatra, but nowadays, people get stuck in a bad movie, (like reading this message) and won't admit it. Actually sitting in the movie and text-messaging that the movie's bad is the reverse, done by teenagers who obviously aren't ashamed (like me) to admit that they are stuck in a bad movie (or a bad Slashdot post)
Look at the kind of movies that are losing money. The movie industry uses spin offs as automatic sellers.
The rule is that spin offs no matter how bad they are suck in the fans. When a movie sucks a fan will show up at a fan club and tell the club members. This loses 30 to 50 viewers for every 1 fan club member. The vast majority of fans don't have the time to join fan clubs.
Also the avrage fan club member is there at the movie relase so by the time the club meets all the members have already seen it to late to learn it sucks. The occasional diffrence is fanboys who have learnned this lesson and won't be showing up anyway. (me me me)
But with texting, fan websites, blogs and fan lists the avrage person can be in contact with the fan base.
Instead of hearing from maybe 1 or 2 hard headed fans who complain about continuity you have 15 to 1,000 fans complainning about bad acting and bad scripts.
Fans: "Hay isn't super gumo cool?" "No he isn't cool thats why I love the comic so much. He's a super herro goof. I mean he brags about how nothing can sneak up on him while slamming into a brick wall. That is funny." "But I thought cool and moron were one in the same" "Thats what ted would like you to believe" "Yeah... ok point made"
Ok so my example fans are totally mindless zombies. The zombis will see a movie even if it sucks.
Movie hype: "Super Gumo in 3D see your favoret action herror in action. Greatest movie ever say the critics we bribed"
Fan "Ohhh I gotta see it" "I've got a ticket for the 7 pm showing." "I'll be there"
Texting: "Hay I'm held up at work so I'll catch it later" "Thats cool I'm in line now"
After movie texting: "Dude it sucked. Don't waist your movie. Gumo is a goof in the not funny way." "Ok I'll save my money"
Usually spin off movies are devoid of the depth that make the original worth while.
The real reason to watch a movie or a show on a continuing series is to watch the character progression and depth. Spin offs aren't allowed that.
Fans talk now more than ever. This should encurage the movie studios. In the past they had to work hard to get movie goers attention.
But today is diffrent. The future fans base is now in the matrix. There is a great example. The original movie was really good in the FX and the FX fans climbed over each other to see it. Instant fanbase just add good movie.
In the future you should epect the movie industry to eather start making better films or suing fan sites. Maybe both.
I don't actually exist.
We can all name movies that have done this, and 9/10ths of them were all put together by a small group of people in pre-production, no script-teams, no auctions.
If a canny band of concerned New Zealanders can achieve the Everest of story adaptations with LotR (and the story behind Matrix I is also instructive), then Hollywood has nowhere to hide and no excuses left.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
as long as they'd [overpaid C*o's] stop calling RMS a red commie for his "wistful" thinking!
I've been in the movie/TV biz for a while now. Most people I meet in the biz I have little respect for because they believe that what makes up a bad movie is what people want. Seems to me they shouldn't be scared of word of mouth if the movie was good. Didn't My Big Fat Greek Wedding start small and build on good word of mouth?
Warning: The following is an angry rant. Sometimes it's good to vent.
From the artcle:
WHAT THE FUCK!? Yeah, you're right that used to happen! Maybe before the flippin' telephone was invented! Why does the article want to say that it's IM that's the problem? C'mon, like those people with cell phones can't just call their friends and say, "the movie sucked"? The article points to the fact that recent blockbusters have been losing 11% more viewers between their opening weekend and their second weekend than equivilently bad blockbusters did last year. The article then draws the (gratuitously asinine) conclusion that it must be because now people can instant message their friends. Oooookaaaay. Maybe they could just call their friends? Like, you know, on a phone? Oh wait, that wouldn't let us explain the 11% increase, gee I guess it must be the text messages! Stupid article. Maybe this year's blockbuster bombs suck 11% more than last year's. Maybe the public is 11% less tolerant of the same old crap as they were last year. Maybe (just maybe) ELEVEN GOD-DAMN PERCENT IS NOT STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO SUPPORT THE BRAIN DAMAGED THEORY THAT INSTANT MESSAGING RESULTS IN FEWER TICKET SALES!!!!
I know I'm on my way to Karma hell for this post, but I don't really care. It was fun. And that sort of sloppy thinking really does piss me off. Of course, I may be guilty of it myself on occasion, but at least I try to avoid it...
Furry cows moo and decompress.
remakes movies instead of innovating and making
new movies! I mean please, why remake "Freaky
Friday"! It was a cute movie for the 1970's, but
couldn't they think of ANYTHING new!?! Can anyone
think of ANY remake that was good (let alone
better than the original). I even hear
that "You've Got Mail" (which I've never seen),
from a few years back, was a remake of a movie
called "Little Shop on the Corner" or something
like that. They just added e-mail, how innovative
was that! Geez!
Hey Hollywood, stop making crappy movies and we
will stop telling you they suck! Sound fair?
If I think a movie sucks, I get to tell others. I will however trade that right for free admission :)
That is what a small thing called free speech allows for.
I will make another trade as well. Lets say they actually get some sort of ban on messaging at the movies. (Which I don't think they will get.) I will just put it on mailing lists and the web. More eyeballs that way.
They are just bitching that it has become a lot easier for people to communicate, thus making their poor efforts harder to hide. Why try to make money the hard way when you can just legislate your piece of the pie?
Until this quits working, we are going to continue to see this foolish crap.
Blogging because I can...
Quote from article
...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."....
....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.
So since summer movies have sucked since the old days, and since back then it took time to spread the word that the movie sucked and by that time the movie would have made it's money, we reserve the right to keep making sucky movies AND keep people in the dark about them by prohibitng technology so that we can make money and more sucky movies.
I don't get it though, Gigli cost like $12 million to make and of course it collapsed in sales. With that $12 million, couldn't somebody have made a less sucky movie? Have we truly run out of things to make movies about? Have we no talent anymore?
MPAA just sent me a subpoeana. I am guilty of calling a friend and telling them the Gigli was a piece of crap. Oops! I'm a repaet offender. I called TWO friends. Headed off to prison now. How will I answer to drug peddler who asks "What are you in for, huh?"
The movies have been a huge growth industry. For the last 10 to 20 years they've been making more and more big budget films and they've been able to make money off of them. The growth is tapering off and now they are starting to lose money.
Loss of sales through: word of mouth; text messages; the web; DVD's; whatever; these are all symptoms of the problem. The real solution will be less investment in films. Or maybe just less accelerated investment in films.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
1: Make better movie
2: people text about better movie
3: ????
4: profit
I used to believe everything I saw on TV.. now I don't believe in anything.
You're nothing; like me.
Of course the article is meant to be silly. But it just makes me wonder what sort of crap makes a good box office. The Hulk bombed, while The Matrix made a killing despite it being rated R stateside (I guess the bigger box office overseas had to be because the movie was being shown to nine year olds outside the US).
1. Cheap.
2. Filling.
3. Readily available everywhere.
4. Fast.
But probably chief among all of these is a combination of low expectations coupled with constant quality. You know it will suck in predictable ways.
Oh. Let's not forget well-marketed.
Good call. I do it for new and old films alike. The IMDB isn't essential, but it can really augment your pleasure and knowledge of movies.
With film reviewing in many media outlets today being little more than PR, there's more reason than ever to hunt down the opinions of people who aren't co-opted by the industry. IMDB's one solution. There's a lot of chaff, to be sure, but there are also many valuable writers with good insights, and I like to see the whole spectrum of response to a movie--between the burps and grunts and gushes and bouquets you can often develop at least a hunch as to whether you'll find a movie interesting.
The MPAA will never try to ban Text Messaging for one simple reason -- THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF COMMING UP WITH A NEW IDEA! 1) Spiderman, Daredevil, The Hulk are not new ideas! 2) Remaking an old movie is not a new idea (on multiple levels! 3) A sequil to a sequil to a sequil to the n'th degree is not a new idea! 4) A parody movie is not a new idea! (But nobody expects them to be a masterpeice anyway.) 5) We do not need another Tumb Raider movie or game. Is this in the wrong list? Oh well. 6) Blaming others for your own failures and shortcommings is not a new idea! As long as I am here. . . If these Industry Executives can't come up with anything new then why don't they try and old idea that worked in the past? Produce something with a good plot, story, and some quality! There is no writen law saying that these things must suffer when you add computer generated critters and special effects.
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
There are matinee showings but they're real inconvienent (which is the whole point I suppose) but why is that the only price differentiation? There are some movies I would see at a reduced price. I wouldn't pay $10 for American pie but $5 seems about right.
Well crafted marketing campaigns (fud lies and bullshit) don work anymore, they have to rely on quality.
Ok, so let me get this strait, filesharers killed the movie since the pirated copy was so readily available but even being 'in the loop' I couldn't get a decent copy of that movie ... rriiiiiigggghhhht.
Fuck them and fuck ppl that look like 'em. [riaa, McBride, Gates, Balmer, AND Osama].
... you'll get your memory extracted by surgery at the end of the movie, because keeping it would be some kind of illegal copying. Brave new world.
Clearly the Founding Father's intended to protect the freedom of speech but not speech such as crying "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Sarcasm: Obviously, crying "Stinker" or "Dud!" is just as bad since both actions cause people to stampede from the theaters.
[signature]
Viral Marketing, though it seems like Gigli and The Hulk inspire some kind of '28 days' scenario, hell they're even quicker!
One of the CS graduate students here, while watching the Matrix Reloaded, thought it was so disappointing that he stayed in the theatre, but started looking up reviews of it with his phone, and SMSing us to tell us his opinion of it.
:-(
But the lack of phone wouldn't have helped the movie studios: he told us all the next day how disappointing it was, ad nauseum. Didn't help me, I'd seen the first midnight showing at The Embassy already
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I thought the hulk was pretty good, as entertaining as spiderman.
What's with all the bad reviews?
I just heard it got bad reviews, but I never read any of them...so what's so bad about the Hulk?
Trailers!
Doesn't take a freaking genius to tell that a movie is gonna suck just by their trailers!
And with movie tickets prices rising every 5 months, the less we are likely to go and spend $30 to go and see it. Especially if we only need to wait 3-4 months to get / rent it on DVD.
If this could end up banning cell phones from movie theaters, then (and I nver though 'd say this), I'm all behind the Evil Empire. Nothing worse than cell phones going off or beeping during a movie... I hate cell phones...
But perhaps hulk might have sold better if they had used the green_skin texture instead of the green_plastic texture that was in the adverts. Look at the specular highlights on the magazine covers. What's the point of seeing a CGI movie with crap CGI?
What about people that heard it sucked from the their friends that downloaded it from the Internet?
Sindri Traustason.
Movies are bombing these days because they're generally shit.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
-It's not fair!
-What kind of a nihilist are you?
What's next, we're going to have to sign a nondisclosure agreement?!
New from Vivendi/Universal and Jack Valenti, the ultimate preventative measure to movie spoilers!
Just sign the following contract: "I, the undersigned, will not let anyone know how much this movie sucks, whether or not it actually sucks, even if it does."
Just use the handy dandy lancet to stick your finger and sign it in blood!
(And as a special option if you choose now, you can give us your firstborn in the event you choose not to sign, in fact, some movie patrons may even thank you!)
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
No way free speech will be outlawed.
Texting is here to stay.
The solution will be to advertize millions of dollars worth to BUY the buzz. So the buzz has moved from print to Electronic handheld devices; so move the ad money too. No problem.
Texting Spam will be the solution. Don't like it? Care to outspent the movie industry in political donations? Care to make this the ONE issue that sways your vote (pro gun lobby, pro labor union, pro social security: these are one issue voters. Gonna join them and vote a rep in or out based on one issue - texting spam?).
WE will care TOO much about other issues to not vote for someone who takes movie industry payoff. The movie industry will see controlling the buzz as worth billions to them thus worth millions in political donations.
The system works by puting a price on everything and inventing law as needed in real time as a function of people shouts and money whispers.
Going on memory here:
I recall a while back that the richest black female in TV (Mrs. O.) was sued according to a Taxas law concerning disparaging remarks about Texas agricultural products. She won in the end, but it goes to show the gag gets tighter all the time.
Roger Ebert, what are you doing in the unemployment insurance line?
Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels These were pretty bad admitedly, but in comparision to Avenging Angelo they are Oscar candites. I mean is it for real? or is it some type of sick joke at the audience's expense? At least I can now use that experience as a point of reference next time I see a bad move. "Well, that was realy bad, but at least it wasn't as bad as Avenging Angelo"
I have always thought that the hype and marketing were part of the problem, at least as far as drop off is concerned.
One reason that movies make more money in their opening weekedns now is that compared to 5 or 10 years ago, they open on a far greater number of screens in cinemas that seat more people for a higher price. Simply from the point of view that more people are able to attend a screening on the opening weekend, it is no wonder that ther is such a tremendous drop off.
Now, combine this idea with the marketting hype and it is no wonder that films drop so precipitously in the second and third weeks. The Hulk was in production for 2 years, The Matrix Reloaded as well, and all the while the studio's hype engines were working hard to produce buzz for the films. I can't even count the number of "Making of 'TheHulk'" documentaries that were on, or how many times "Access Hollywood" interviewed the cast of Matrix Reloaded.
When there is an admittedly contained fan base for some films, so much hype only increases the chances that it won't do well after week 1. How many people have planned to go see Matrix Revolutions the day or weekend it opens already? I would guess somewhere around 65% of the people that are going to see the film. I myself generally see films on the weekend that they open because I have been waiting to see it. The films that I don't see on open weekends are the good ones without the hype, films such as "A Beautiful Mind", "E Tu Mama Tambien", or "Pollock".
What I submit is that even though a lot of these movies suck, they are further injured by a glut of seats, resulting in poor staying power at the box office.
Word of mouth is the best marketing in the world. Unless of course your product sucks. Then it's the worst.
It was only during the 80's that word of mouth *stopped* being the determining factor for a movie's success or failure. Once word of mouth and critical review meant it was possible for a good movie to build an audience. This however, often took several weeks.
During the 80's the studios formed a 'blockbuster' mentality: critics were prevented from seeing movies before they were released (they might write something bad) and movies started being designed and marketed to be blockbusters, ie. to pull in all their audience in the first weekend, before anyone has a chance to tell anyone that the movie is bad. (There's nothing conspriatorial about this: it's basic, explicit, blockbuster marketing.)
Now a movie lives or dies according it's weekend boxoffice. Critics have been exiled, and 'reviewers' are taken on cruises. The trailer is actually now more important than the movie, which is why nothing is held back from inclusion. And in the movie - the source material for the trailer - further emphasis is put on special FX, 'high concept' (ie. must be able to write description of movie that will fit on the back of pack of matches in such a way that anyone in any country can understand it), and simple good vs. evil story lines.
So it's no wonder they are upset; texting is like the communal version of 'Ain't it Cool.' But it's nice to see digital communications putting a natural end to this temporary phase of the movie industry. Perhaps we'll get to see better movies and crappier marketing - instead of skillful marketing and crappy movies.
BTW, last night BBC TV News reported a recordbreaking year for CD album sales! Never in the history of recorded music, have we bought so many albums! So the internet really *does* seem to be driving music sales. The RIAA is suing people for helping them to make more money than they've ever made before! (A nice gig if you can get it.)
However, the bad news is singles are doing very badly. So the artists like Madonna and Radiohead who are boycotting the iTMS 'to preserve the album format' are looking just about as stupid as the RIAA. I wonder if they'll sign up and start working to preserver the singles format?
The studios these days have it all wrong. Why does every movie have to be mega blockbuster costing 100 mill to make. What happened to B movies. The 80s for me was the height of Hollywood. All the classics were made then. Plus there were so many B movies, especially horror, made then. They need to start funding small budget unknown movies. GIve people a choice. I was recently going to goto the cinema but all the ahd on in 10 screens was 3 movies. Annoying. Same at the video store. THey have 10000 copies of the big movie and none of the olds ones. Get it sorted.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
will even bother to find the link to the LA times story, here it is for you, pre-digested and inline, just the way you like it. You people make me sick.
High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash
By Lorenza Munoz, Times Staff Writer
Fatima Bholat stepped into the summer sunshine, fresh from the darkened theater where she'd just seen "The Hulk." It was opening day, and the 16-year-old high school junior had rushed out with her younger brother to see director Ang Lee's moody take on the big green superhero.
Now she wanted to tell her friends all about it. She whipped out her silver-and-blue T-Mobile cell phone, pressed a button and did something that strikes terror into the hearts of studio executives:
She tapped out a message telling her friends exactly what she thought of the movie -- and the verdict was brutal.
Fatima's pan was all her friends needed to convince them to stay away.
And they told their friends. Soon the chatter would end up in a girls Internet discussion group, where all the world could see what a few teenagers in Manhattan Beach thought about a movie.
Word of mouth -- buzz -- has long been an element in a film's success or failure. But rapid advances in technology, in the hands of an "American Idol" culture quick to express its vote-'em-off sentiments, has accelerated the pace of communication so much that Hollywood feels the reverberations at the box office almost immediately.
"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, referring to the millions of dollars studios throw at a movie to ensure a big opening weekend.
"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," he said. "Those days are over. Today, there is no fooling the public."
Widely released movies this summer dropped off an average of 51% between their first weekend and their second, according to Nielsen EDI Inc., a box office tracking firm. Five years ago, the drop-off averaged 40.1%.
The casualties are everywhere, and even mighty studio marketing machines have been powerless to stem the tide.
"The Hulk" opened with $62 million but fell 69.7% by its second weekend. "2 Fast 2 Furious" started off with $50.4 million but dipped 63%. "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" turned in a disappointing $37 million and then saw its fortunes drop by 62.8%. And the much-maligned "Gigli" was in a class by itself, plunging faster than the scariest summer thrill ride -- a disastrous $3.7-million opening weekend, followed by a record-breaking drop of 81.9%.
Instant word of mouth, as a trend, probably traces back to 1998 in Japan with the release of "Ringu," Sands said.
The cerebral horror flick that inspired a U.S. remake -- "The Ring," which was released here last fall -- caused a sensation in Japan. And in a technology-forward country with lots of cell phones, instant word of mouth became the fuel that lighted that film's box office success. The power of instant feedback -- good or bad -- was immediately apparent.
"I remember it struck fear into the hearts of our Japanese distributors, because it was a new phenomenon," Sands said. "By the time people walked out of the theaters, they were instant messaging. And it is so much more pronounced now."
In the U.S. these days, the pace of chat is fast enough, in some cases, to affect a movie's box office results from its Friday opening to Saturday night.
"Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" signaled it was in trouble when it dropped 11% overnight.
(Conversely, a hit like "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" can show its mettle instantly; the Disney film, which opened on a Wednesday, actually went up 17.3% from Friday to Saturday, according to Nielsen EDI.)
Generally, though, Hollywood lives and dies by the weekend-to-weekend comparisons, which have fluctuated dramatically this summer
For those that missed it The Onion's focus report is here
Though it's too late by the time you see this, 10 (yes, I said 10) commercials before the first preview in the theater could be a danger indicator. That's what I experienced leading up to T3. In retrospect, some of the commercials were better than the movie.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Has anyone heard of the epposite efect were a film that had a small ADvertising campaign and bigger than expeted box office takings?
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
With remote activation. It's the only way.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This article could pass for fiction! Wow. Maybe the real problem here is executives who will use any scapegoat to elude being held responsible for foisting a floppo-pu movie on the public.
My old man used to say "The more commercials for a movie, the worse it will be."
-- $G
Nah, people are just not doing what they are supposed to do. They listen to their friends instead of falling for the flashy commercial. I say we impose a MPAA tax on text messages to cover up the lost profits. Either that, or outlaw friendship. Creating public fear of their neighbors is the media's job in the grand scheme of things. Notice how every time you watch the news they allways tell you what race the people involved are? I think they want everyone afraid of their neighbors so no one gets together and realizes that you can still make a difference. Apathy is good for media because you'll stay home to watch television or go out a movie. It benefits politicians in the long run too they don't worry about dissenting votes when only their friends participate.
Studios will install a weight sensor, directional microphone and a filament in every theater seat. Afterwards, every time something "funny" happens in a movie, a Laughter sign will appear onscreen. If the weight sensor somesone sitting in the chair, and the microphone doesn't pick up a laugh at the appointed time, the filament administers a small shock. The shocks get progressively stronger the more "jokes" you miss, or if you miss a particularly "important" joke.
lvng thtr now
[SEND TO MANY]
This Like That - fun with words!
i jst went 2 c charlies ():)z 2 & it rly sukD. d RT of d king shud b kewl tho.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Kind of on topic here, I just noticed a few posts from some of you Americans,...
:(
Are you guys copping the same problem we're having in Australia at the moment where you go in to a 14$ paid movie and NOT ONLY do we see trailers spoiling future movies (ok I don't mind trailers that's fair I spose) but ALSO 15+ minutes of ad's before the trailers?! - I'm PAYING to see the movie! - it's not free to air television >:(
Movie starts at 09:30 - so you have to arrive at 09:20 to get a good seat.
Wait 10 minutes till 9:30 during radio ads / music of some kind.
9:45 "normal" ads stop and trailers start
10:00 movie starts
AND movies are going longer and longer nowadays
40 minutes from 9:20 to 10:00 just before it even starts - I'm seriously thinking of not going anymore.
I've no hope of completely eradicating the reactionary posting around here, simply suggesting a little selectivity. Baby-steps, you know?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
...they ARE the congressmen. :-}
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
These days on a big blockbuster film or major TV show (especially in the SF&F or Anime genres) the take at the box office (or advertising revenue on first showing for TV shows) is a miniscule proportion of the total income. Video/DVD adds some but still not that much. The biggest income is from the merchandising. All those posters, plastic figures, replica items in the film/show, commemorative shot glasses, comic books, tie in novels and even the picture printed on the side of a happy/kids club/whatever box feeds into the licensed products income which frequently dwarfs the initial income and will usually continue trickling in for years after the film has left the theatres.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Actually, while I was working at a Blockbuster Video a co-worker and I noticed this on one of his new movies (some straight to video piece of garbage). We then had to go around and look at the cases for ALL of the Segal movies. As a matter of fact, he has three expressions: "Intense", "Amused" and "Angry". The differences are subtle, and you have to look at a number of different pictures of him before you can catch them.
Ye flipping gods, I'm ashamed to share a birthday with that man.
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
Two nights in a row, David Letterman asked his audience who went to see Gigli. No one clapped. No one.
Also, it's Yahoo!'s fault. Their posted reviews from newspapers all over the country gave Gigli a big fat grade D. Yahoo!'s reader reviews were even more scalding.
So, yeah, Gigli was an awsome movie but was victimized by pervasive evil-doers everywhere. Yeah, that's it. I'm sure of it.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Highlander: There should have been only one....
Your productions suck! and why shouldn't we alert others on the poor quality of your movies? Maybe this will encourage you to put more creative thought processes into the making of movies rather than slapping a bunch of eye-candy special effects together and hyping it way up.
"A consumer must be exposed to a stimulas at least 7 times before he will act on the given stimulas." Damn that marketing teacher will have that stuck in my brain till the end of time.
This likely indicates the number of brian cells left in the average consumer.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
This is what I call the "Weekend at Bernie's" effect, after the 1989 comedy of that name. Whatever its weaknesses, that movie's outrageous situational humor made it reasonably fun to watch, at least after a few beers. Unfortunately, the seemingly endless theatrical trailer gave away all of that humor in advance.
Sadly, this became the norm in Hollywood-- especially for bad flicks.
The only time I use text messaging is when I send a message to someone who might be in a situation where they don't want to be disturbed by a phone call (even a short one.) Thus I send a text message which they can read at their leisure.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Plan 9 from Outer Space isn't on the list.
Thus, it can't be trusted.
And even though I haven't seen Gigli, I can't see how it could possibly be WORSE than Super Mario Bros.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The movie industry has a problem. I have a solution (original idea by G. Lucas).
1. Install digital projectors in every movie theatre.
2. Upload new movies to all theatres in the world.
3. Start the movie at the same time worldwide.
4. Delete the movie from the theatres the same day, unless it's really successful. Upload the next movie.
5. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
6. Profit.
Another idea. Implement one of existing technical solutions disabling mobile phones in the theatres. Argue that you do it for the benefit of the public.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
This argument doesn't hold water.
Everyone I know that has seen Open Range has said nothing but good things about it. Some even call it the best Western movie they've ever seen.
Yet it is tanking at the box office.
Did i just send a message via txt message that had a copyright in it? Now I will be sued by them!
What banning cell phones and pagers from the Box office? Word will get our. By smoke signal or by yelling it. It will be known.
Perhaps this could be the beginning of EMI/radio interference projection along with the movie projection. Stop's annoying distractions and slows down perceived marketing disasters. I wouldn't put it past them.
Next we know, people wont even be able to mention the names of any movie for fear that it might get bad publicity. Then, when that fails, all forms of talking will no longer be acceptable.
Seriously, if movie makers want to make a good profit, make a good fucking movie. If you make shit, expect to get shit in return.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Many providers have calling plans with unlimited text messaging, or a generous monthly allowance. If you send more than two messages a day, it's worth the $6 a month to get a Mobile Web plan with 200 free messages per month.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I love reading stories like this because they show how new technologies such as cell phones and the internet help people make good decisions and cut through all the BS.
I think things like this are a HUGE win for consumers, as such common rip-off business practices as deception and mega-advertising have much less of an effect on an educated consumer.
Surely this cuts both ways both ways, good movies should benefit by spread by word of mouth "in this case word of text" , requiring less promotion, and via a vera, bad moves will die quicker. So in the end it evens out. Unless "bad news travels further-faster" which may be the case.
However, in either caser the movie watcher wins, by save money by not watching BAD movies and learns quicly about good movies and hence more money to spend on good movies.
Oh good. I have friends who hate certain movies and music. I consider them as perfect detectors for stuff worth looking into.
Everytime the Term "Text Messaging" messaging comes up.
Its named SMS and not "Texting".
um, /. poster since 98-98?
back before you youngins even had the glint of stock options in your eyes...