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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
Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal - Film at 11
Governments are not necessary.
Where's the foot icon?
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Hey, that's probably a lot easier than getting rid of bad movies. :)
...don't go giving them any ideas.
Just blame it all on SCO.
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
Where is Jay Sherman when you need him.. *sigh*
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
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!
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!
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.
True ravers don't need drugs
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 hope you know that by reading a book, and going outside, you may lose your posting privileges.
You, sir, are in violation of the DMCA, as you have just discussed methods to bypass the movie industries security procedures. They have pumped millions of dollars into our nation's economy in order to prove that their movies are worth watching. You are advocating that people use free resources in order to determine the quality of movies for themselves, which bypasses the movie industry's security procedure of bald-faced lies, and contributes nothing to the national economy. You are obviously a terrorist and a communist. Expect to hear from our hired goons shortly.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
What ever happened to the idea of building a better mouse-trap?
It was bought out and supressed by Disney, before one of their characters had an accident.
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.
The MPAA is trying to get a bill passed that will let it DDoS SMS systems when they sense a bad review of a movie.
Please mod the original article down -2 for trolling and flamebait. :-)
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
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
Maybe schools should teach practicing safe text.
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.
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.
Gobble Gobble.
I saw it at full price (times two tickets). That's the price I pay to be able to mock it fully and openly.
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.
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.
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*
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!
e) Most of the audience laughs about 2.5 seconds after I do at comedies and that makes me sad.
"What's a four letter word for snatch"
"Grab"
"Oh...right."
I was the only pervert in the theatre laughing at this joke in the preview. It was even a preview before American Wedding, I'd figure one more pervert would have gotten the joke.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Whats next, a "walk thru EULA"?
.....Money not refundable in the event that you do not agree to these conditions.....""
"..... By walking through these cimema doors you agree to the following conditions....
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
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'.
since they can't get away with it as easily anymore, perhaps we'll see less bad movies?
"Teachers leave us kids alone
The problem is because the people don't want to see the movies, therefore it's people that should be illegal.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Maybe the average European teen is just dumber then their US counterparts. I was waiting in line at the movies the other day, and heard some teenagers asking for tickets to "2 Fast 2 Furious". Oh, goddamnit.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
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.
The irony about all this is that their slogan on that stupid "Respect Copyrights" commercial is
"Movies. They're worth it."
People in the US actually TEXT MESSAGE in the first place?
Color me suprised.
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.
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.
'nuff said.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...that I don't have any friends.
______________________
Sigs are insigificant.
Sometimes they say "For forensic pathologist..." as well.
So something finally beat out Manos: the Hands of Fate.
That blows my mind.
skye
MANOS!
The Hands... of Fate.
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
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?
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.
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?
I had a similar translation problem at recent project meeting. I was suppose to tell my boss:
....
'We've gone a bit over budget and time but I think we can wrap it up in the next month'
but it came out
'You under budgeted, under quoted, miscalculated available resources and the quality of those resources and I'm not going to take the fall.'
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
For example, suppose you sell overpriced and unoriginal music. Suddenly it's easy to copy and distribute music, so sales lag. The solution? Under the "old" logic, you would improve the quality (both artistic quality and media convenience) and reduce the price. The new logic, on the other hand, dictates that you should lower the your product's quality and ease of use, and that you should sue your customers. This is justified, because you have a right to a bigger profit than last year.
Suppose you are a Unix vendor whose product sucks. You try to catch the Linux bandwagon, but you have nothing to offer, and your company is on the verge of bankruptcy. Under the old logic, you would diversify your business away from proprietary Unix, using your name to sell services. But remember, your rights have been taken away! You cannot sit idly by; you must inflate your stock with insane claims about your competitors, annoy large companies, and completely destroy your name. The courts, the media, and the investors are your friends, and you must trust they will return to you your much-deserved profits.
Now that you know more about the logic that runs the world, you can understand the ideal course of action for the MPAA. Do you succumb to the outmoded free market theories, improve your products, and stop saturating the market with overhyped films? No! You should lash out against free speech, a discredited idea which has been pirating your profits for far too long.
Litigious bastards
"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.
My Blog
Also, if you look at international gross, ID4 actually grossed more than all the Star Wars pictures except for Phantom Menace. How such a stupid movie gets the third highest gross of all time is beyond me.
Because it has "Star Wars" in the title. Lucas could release a movie called "Star Wars: This One Really Sucks Ass" or "Star Wars: The Jar Jar Saga" and hordes of Star Wars fan sheep (including plenty who read this site--you know who you are) would be lined up to watch it.
Nobody has suggested killing a messenger, the article simply identified the problem with the "drop-off". If you insist, however, I have another option on how to handle these messengers, and of course, it involves the infamous "there ought to be a law":
Everyone knows that wireless services are an open network for illegal transactions such as bad movie reviews that are in direct contradiction with the carefullly crafted advertisements and previews from the MPAA. This is costing the movie industry lost revenues and wasted advertizing dollars. Here are the numbers:
1. There are over 6 billion people in the world;
2. Half of all population will have a cell phone by 2005 - that's 3 billion people;
2. At least 1 in every 3 people sends a text message to a friend per day, that's 1 billion text messages a day;
3. Naturally, we assume that all those text messages are bad movie reviews so that's 1 billion bad movie reviews a day;
4. At an average worldwide ticket price of $5 per show, movie industry is losing $5 billion per day!!!
5. There ought to be a law to make these ill-conceived activities illegal that cause legitimate, and fairly marketed products fail so miserably.
I propose a Digital Movie Critics Act (DMCA) that will mandate that all wireless providers monitor all text or multimedia messaging transmissions between their subscribers. In the case that they detect a bad movie review being transmitted, or a negative comment made on any MPAA product without authorization, the case with all personal information of the subscriber will be reported directly to MPAA for further investigation.
Based on the goodwill of MPAA, if they determine that an illegal act has been committed, they will be able to recover damages from each individual violator. Damages will be set as follows: from $500 up to $150,000 per incident, depending on the advertizing cost of the movie being critiqued and/or up to 5 years imprisonment per incident. Wireless service provider will be required to terminate the subscriber's service.
I read the article.. However, I posted just having read the little blurb...
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
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 ?
Three year olds don't have the lobbying power to get Federal laws enacted.
;)
Obviously you've never stood in line at a grocery store with a 3 year old wanting a candy bar... half the people in the line offer to buy the entire damn candy isle, just to shut the litte snot up. That kind of power can go a loooooong way in lobbying Federal laws...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
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.".
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.
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!
My favorite Segal movie was Executive Decision. He really shined in that one. He needs to make more like it.
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.