Slashdot Mirror
WB Took Pains To "Delay" Pirating of Dark Knight
Jay writes "The L.A. Times is reporting on a new studio tactic — not to prevent piracy, but to delay it, as was the case with special tactics used with Dark Knight. 'Warner Bros. executives said the extra vigilance paid off, helping to prevent camcorded copies of the reported $180-million film from reaching Internet file-sharing sites for about 38 hours. Although that doesn't sound like much progress, it was enough time to keep bootleg DVDs off the streets as the film racked up a record-breaking $158.4 million on opening weekend. The movie has now taken in more than $300 million. The success of an anti-piracy campaign is measured in the number of hours it buys before the digital dam breaks.'" You know what else helps to have a big opening weekend? Making a good movie.
"If the movie's a stinker, the word will travel at the speed of a mouse click, ruining chances of making back money." So you can't get money for a shoddy product? Cry me a river.
Do they really think those 38 hours bought them anything? Do they honestly believe that their profits would have been reduced had a crappy cam recording been available 38 hours earlier? I'm sorry, but I'm just not capable of managing that level of suspension of disbelief. Seems more like a set-up for a later date in Congress where movie execs get to testify that they spent $x million to stave off the camming and all they were able to manage was 38 hours. I wonder just how dedicated they were to these "delaying tactics."
FTA: "it was enough time to keep bootleg DVDs off the streets as the film racked up a record-breaking $158.4 million on opening weekend. The movie has now taken in more than $300 million."
So, they credit those 38 hours for the record-breaking $158.4 million they made on opening weekend, but they've made another $150 million since the pirated copies have been available (according to the article). So, the pirated copies becoming available didn't seem to have much of an affect, did it?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Does anyone really download Cam copies of movies these days? Especially for dark, special effect-filled, high motion movies like Dark Knight where most Cams are basically unwatchable.
I'd be surprised if Cam copies had *any* actual impact on movie ticket revenues; I know if I was so desperate to see a movie that I couldn't wait for the DVD release (Or DVD rip), I'd pay the £6 to watch it in the cinema in decent quality on a big screen.
Here in Spain what you call piracy is LEGAL if you don't earn money with it. And so it was on your countries not so long ago. We just preserved our rights.
I don't think copying films or other media and redistributing them--even for free--has every been legal in the US. It's still legal to make personal copies, or make copies in an educational setting, but I think it would be pretty hard to argue that you have a "right" to copy and redistribute films for free.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Wow - 300million and they are worried about a thousand people watching poor quality pirated copies. Bet it wouldn't even be 1mil less in earnings
This is a double dare for the pirates to break the 38 hour record next time. What a useless tactic.
This is priceless:
"If the movie's a stiff, and word gets out too early that it's a stiff, it's devastating to the business model," Garland said."
In another words, if we can keep the movie audience quiet for several days, we will rip off enough people to cover our costs and make some extra dough.
Considering that the movie is not going to be released in Germany until late August, there isn't much of a chance to prevent bootleg copies from being available before the theatrical release. Let's see how that strategy works for them.
I never understood the appeal of screeners. If I'm not interested enough to see a movie when it comes out in theaters, I'll rent it when it comes out on DVD. Watching a shaky cam with terrible audio at some awkward angle and half the screen covered in subtitles is not even worth the bandwidth needed to download it.
have a big opening weekend? Making a good movie. ... or getting your star killed.
Also:
(from Wikipedia):
Warner Bros. created a viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, developing promotional websites and trailers highlighting screenshots of Heath Ledger as the Joker. After Ledger's death in January 2008, however, the studio refocused its promotional campaign.[3][4] The film was released on July 16, 2008 in Australia, on July 18, 2008 in North America, and on July 24, 2008 in the United Kingdom. Prior to its box office debut in North America, record numbers of advance tickets were sold for The Dark Knight. The film has broken multiple box office records, and achieved an overall approval rating of 95% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
That's called good ol' fashioned marketing.
Do people actually choose between watching a bootleg copy of a movie, and watching it in the theater in the opening weekend?
I'd expect bootleg copies to be in direct competition with dvd's, maybe hurting the value of tv rights, and perhaps even some of the last days the movie is on the big screen when you go there just to watch a movie, rather that a specific movie.
But on the opening weekend? It seems like an entirely different experience.
Sounds to me like the only thing the studios are interested in is controlling the bad information. The studios want people ignorant as to if this is a good movie or not on opening night. Then a large group of people will risk their money to see it first, and the studio rakes in the dough even with a bad movie. From this perspective, T+38 hours is a hell of a lot better than T MINUS 2 weeks.
AccountKiller
The Internet is worldwide. All audio/visual medias can be transfered via the internet.
Update your business model and do world-wide releases.
Marketspeak: you'll have more chance of ripping off people this way, especially on the opening weekend.
heh, I went to a 12:01 showing of TDK, during both the watchmen trailer and the opening WB logo for the movie, you could have heard a pin drop in the theater, people were incredibly silent, after that I was far too absorbed in the movie to notice anything else around me. :P
(And yeah I know, going with the hardcore fan crowd isn't always possible, but it sure is nice)
The people who put up their $150+ million to set the box-office record for the "Dark Knight" are not the same people who would be watching bad camcorder videos. The latter don't mind waiting an extra 38 hours, and certainly do mind $12/ticket.
Every download or bootleg DVD != movie ticket.
Maybe if the movie and music executives finally understand that the pirates are not potential customers, they'll focus on improving the satisfaction of actual customers, and thus earn more money. Instead, they are beating a horse that's not only already dead, but is rather decayed at this point.
Oh come on, mod the parent flamebait? If he had said US'ians instead of Europeans everyone would have laughed and modded it +5 funny.
The great irony of this, is that everyone on the board thinks that the studio can just arbitrarily make a good movie button.
"well, just make a good movie", betrays a total lack of understanding for the arts.
No one really knows a canned formula for making a good movie. A studio can do everything that it thinks will make a movie, best writers, best directors, best actors, and that doesn't guarantee a good picture at all. If you had 100 guys in a room, each of which with their own ideas, how do you know which of those is going to make a movie that will gross 300 million dollars? Clearly, if it was so easy to make a hit movie, then, don't you think they would do it. And, even if they did have a formula to make hit movies, half of the people on this board would be complaining that movies are formulaic.
This is my sig.
Update your business model and do world-wide releases.
A simultaneous release would work in the United States, two-thirds of Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. (Ever notice that the major anglophone countries tend to come in pairs?) But other countries have other languages, and it takes time to line up quality voice actors for a dub job that isn't complete feces.
They figure that it's a significant success to be 38 hours ahead of the pirates with a US movie release ... and then they don't allow the German audience any legal way to see the movie for another month? Whuh?
So the global hype machine has kicked in, the net's full of people saying, "Man, you GOTTA see this movie!", and when the poor old Germans turn up at the cinema desperate to hand over their cash to join the party, the studios turn them away. "We don't want your money now, come back in a month's time."
A month is a long time to wait, and it's not going to be too surprising if a bunch of twitchy germans decide that they want to watch this thing while the buzz is still there, and try to get to see it by some other route. They aren't allowed to watch in it cinemas, they aren't yet allowed to buy it on DVD.
If they're already being hit by the marketing hype, but there's NO LEGAL WAY for them to watch this movie, what's the logical result?
If a manufacturer spends millions building up demand for a product, and then refuses to sell it to some of their customers, not because of any intrinsic shortage of material, but as part of a clever marketing strategy, then that manufacturer has lost the right to complain when people start pirating it.
As a general rule, you aren't supposed to advertise a product that isn't available, and you aren't supposed to manipulate markets by deliberately creating regional shortages and banning people from cross-importing. I mean, I know the media companies probably have a special dispensation that makes them immune to the WTO rules that everyone else has to play by, but just because they can legally manipulate markets in ways that would be illegal for other businesses, it doesn't make them immune to the bad karma.
If customers think that your business is crooked, and your business refuses to supply those customers, they're less likely to feel bad about pirating your material. And once they've gotten into the piracy habit, and they've made the contacts and found the websites, and installed the software, they're going to continue doing it.
Business Rule #1: Create a product or service that people want or need.
Business Rule #2: Make it easy for them to buy it from you.
Eric Baird
I didn't buy a 52" HDTV to watch a DVD of some guy filming a movie in a theater. Give me a break. I also don't have the time or patience to wait 2 days to see if a torrent file is any good. I'm sure these guys lose some money to piracy but its not nearly as much as they make it out to be. Most people buying the street DVD for $5 are too cheap to and wouldn't pay the full price anyway. I'm tired of listening to multi millionaires whine about how people are stealing money from them. So skip the gold plated toilet for the new mansion and settle for the ceramic one.
The suits are those guys that have to go in front of a bunch of movie theater owners and persuade them to buy the movie that you made. They are going to have relationships with these people and so are going to have a pretty good feel for what those people are interested in paying for, and what they aren't. So, say, for example, you making a movie and the central part of the plot has to do with, for whatever reason, a cantaloupe. For whatever reason, the suit happens to know that the guy who owns whatever movie chain that has 100 screens, really, really hates cantaloupe, and, he knows from having lunch that a guy who owns 50 screens just said, "hey when are they going to make a movie about bananas. I think bananas are a funny fruit."
Guess what! The suit isn't going to even try and sell the chain owner on the cantaloupe. Since he's writing you the check to make the movie, he's going to take down that barrier for himself, and come to you and say, "hey, would it really be that much worse if it were say, a banana"?
If you answer correctly, you just picked up 150 more screens for your film. If you didn't, then, you possibly don't get your movie made.
This is my sig.
What bullshit. For a start, this guy "develops anti-piracy technology". Why the hell the journalists don't question HOW HE KNOWS THIS? Or is he just pulling it out his ass?
Especially for a "geek" movie -- say a comic book superhero, Star Trek, etc, -- the geeks WILL certainly download blurry camcorder videos. Then, if it's not crap, they'll all troop down to the cineplex to watch it on the big screen. Then, they'll buy the DVD. Then, they'll buy the Director's Cut..... The studios whine about how the "bad buzz" went around with Hulk. "If not for those meddling kids it would have been a hit". That movie was DOA. "Dark Knight" has wonderful buzz. It wouldn't matter if you could download it the day it was out, it'd still have broken records.
So, the hypothesis is that delaying piracy for 2 or 3 days increases the box office take. They manage to delay piracy for about 2 days with The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight has a big opening weekend. So, they proclaim that the experiment is a success.
The problem: Correlation does not prove causation. This 'experiment' appears to have no control - no way to measure how the movie *would* have done if there *had* been piracy. No baseline to compare against.
I am in the camp that think that, basically, piracy has very little to do with how a movie does at the box office. I currently believe (though don't have a study to prove this, admittedly, so this is opinion) that most of the people who pirate movies, won't pay for them (there are some people, no doubt, who use the pirated version as a shareware/try-before-you-buy system, so it might have some impact there, but I personally don't know of many people who do that, so I'm inclined to estimate that as a low percentage). Along with that, it is my current belief that most of the people who *do* pay for movies at the movie theater, will do so if the movie is good, *even if* a pirate version is available, because the movie theater provides that big-screen, awesome sound system experience that most people can't afford to have at home.
I don't know that I'm any more right than the people who think the piracy control is so important, but my point is, I don't think they've really established a strong link between their anti-piracy measures and the box office sales. I think a better indicator is that the previous Batman Begins movie was well received by audiences, and they knew that basically the same team was doing this sequel, and wanted to see another movie with this new interpretation of Batman.
It's a great concept, really! Not doing what other people tell you to do has a long, and glorious history.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Oh, goodness... flamebait? Really? My point is that there are a lot of people, as some might say "sheeple", who flock to opening weekend movies like they just need to be part of the masses. This jacks up the popularity of a movie unnecessarily... which is the point of some of the posts here.
Granted, I probably should have been more verbose and stated: "Unless you really, really want to see the movie and you're not doing it because I have this dire need to be a part of the masses but because the movie interested you."
I usually wait to see what happens the second or third weekend. I guess you can tell that I don't buy the latest & greatest, I didn't hop the iPod, iPhone, iwhatever bandwagon, I've never watched Titanic all the way through, and I'll not likely see this latest Batman (I don't like getting into the mind of the psychotically and murderously deranged.)
Great! Thanks for letting me know the low quality CAM is available already for me to watch on my awesome 3" iPhone screen. I'm off to download it. Now I don't have to pay a reasonale price to see it on the big screen in high quality with surround sound and everything. Geez, it would have been horrible to sit through that. I'm saved!
Seriously though, I find it hard to believe that the anti-piracy campaign had any effect whatsoever upon those who intended to see it at the theatre, and those who intend to wait and download it. I'm sure the big opening weekend had more to do with the quality of the film, than the availability of a pirated copy.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.