How Twitter is Changing Hollywood Box Office Fortunes
Word of mouth is probably the best advertisement for a movie. For a movie to rake in the initial numbers its important for the marketing machinery to generate positive word of buzz to draw people to the theaters.
However social networking communities and twitter are more than ever playing a very active role in determining how a movie’s box office collections atleast in Hollywood. However traditionally word of mouth affected the box office collections in days….but with the rise of twitter as a universal micro blogging tool, it has started narrowing that time frame and has started affecting a box office fortunes within hours now.And that has made the big studio bosses a worried lot.
Recently released movies such as “Bruno” and ” G.I. Joe” have had unexpected flops at the box office - just within their opening weekends - while “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” survived blistering critical reaction to become a blockbuster.
Box-office watchers say the dramatic swings may be caused by Twitter and other social networking sites that can blast instant raves - or pans - to hundreds of people just minutes after the credits roll.
Studios are trying to gauge the impact of an avalanche of tweets, and how it affects the staying power of a movie. Was the 39 percent box office drop of “Bruno” from Friday to Saturday a case of disappointed moviegoers tweeting from theater lobbies?
“I think Twitter can’t be stopped,” says Stephen Bruno, the Weinstein Co.’s senior director of marketing. He’s trying to stay ahead of an audience’s appetite for instant information.
“Now you have to see it as an addition to the campaign of any movie,” he says. “People want real-time news and suddenly a studio can give it to them in a first-person way. The blogs have to go to our feeds for the latest trailers and reports.”
However some studios have already been successful in manipulating twitter to a great effect.The Weinstein Co. has already done that big-time for the release of the Quentin Tarantino- Brad Pitt World War II epic “Inglourious Basterds.”
The company packed a special screening at San Diego’s only for people who won the tickets via Twitter. It also staged “the first ever Red Carpet Twitter meet-up” during the movie’s premiere at Mann’s Chinese in Hollywood, generating celebrity tweets including Sarah Silverman’s “just made me smile forever” and Tony Hawk’s “another Tarantino classic.”
Twitter has definitely broadened the reach of bloggers and other aspiring opinion-makers and made them an important part of the movie marketing machinery . However perhaps its too early and premature to suggest that Box office collections can be influenced by tweets,but the fact remains that tweets have got enormous power to use viral word of mouth to shape opinions and Hollywood finally seems to be noticing it .
What about Bollywood? Do you think tweets play an important role in spreading buzz.. Write in to me with your thoughts on it..
