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Rants

Widge Goes Off: Wait, The Turbulence Has Cleared!

Widge
August 21, 2006
1 min read

Amazing…your prayers–or whatever–were answered. Here I was bitching about Snakes on a Plane not getting the #1 spot, but now that the actuals are out, Snakes has won by a forked tongue. So take this WGO as a cautionary tale–and don’t put me through this shit again.

BTW, for you iTunes folks, you can grab the “official, unofficial” feed here. Yes, I finally registered it my own damn self. But if you’ve already subscribed manually, it’s the same difference.

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7 comments

  • As I have been telling friends all week, Snakes On a Plane is EXACTLY why you can’t count on our generation to do ANYTHING. Look at the 2004 elections for yet another example. I just… I just don’t know what to do. You talk to them on the internet, get them really excited about something, and then expect them to put their money where their typing fingers are and… “Aw, dude, sorry about that.” I went to Snakes On a Plane, and enjoyed it with a half-full house of other like-minded folks. Everyone else can get Viruses On a PC for all I care.

  • The thing people are forgeting in the bubble and burst is this movie probably make an extra $5 million because of the Internet.

    Internet advertizing does have an impact. It’s just not there yet. Plenty of people still read the newspaper.

  • $5 million out of the entire internet = not impressive. Besides, “It’s just not there yet”? Are you high? Where have you been? You’re going to say that off of one film? Blair Witch Project = not there? OK Go performing on the MTV Video Music Awards because of a cheap little video they shot with treadmills = not there? Dude who wrote Monster Island getting a book deal out of blogging = not there? Narnia Rap making people talk about SNL in a positive light for the first time in how many years = not there? The list goes on and on and on. And don’t say there’s a difference, because there isn’t. It’s all advertising. It’s all pushing a product. And you keep harping on the fact that people still read the newspaper. Well, whoopee fucking do. If you’re telling me that there’s a significant amount of overlap between the SOAP demographic and the still-gets-news-from-dead-trees demographic then you really ARE high.

  • First, take a breath Widge.

    Second, the extra $5 million is impressive when you take into effect the relatively miniscule amount spent on this viral advertizing.

    Third, I may have stated my position badly. I’m not saying that the Internet doesn’t have a great deal of influence. However, traditional media is still huge for the majority of the people. The Internet hasn’t reached that ubiquitousness and we forget that sometimes. Snakes On A Plane is a reminder of that.

  • I have taken a breath and your argument still smells.

    First, I’d be interested in knowing where you got “miniscule” for the amount they spent on this. I haven’t seen an amount, so what’s your source for that?

    Lastly, SOAP is nothing of the sort. I know you’re a big advocate of trogs–because you seem to keep wanting to link everything back to newspapers and legacy media for some odd reason–but your argument holds no water. What does legacy media have to do with SOAP other than where they were reporting on the INTERNET-BASED hype for the film? If there’s anything SOAP proves, it’s that 79K blog entries on a film doesn’t mean you’re going to have a huge box office turnout, especially when the very folks you’re marketing to are just the types who would wait for the DVD.

    Save your legacy media emphasis for where it makes sense, dude.

  • [sigh]

    SOAP made more money than it would have without the Internet buzz. But because people got caught up in the buzz and wildly overestimated its performance, they see this as a failure when it really wasn’t.

    And the whole ‘people still read newspapers’ was just a reminder that a huge segment of the population still uses legacy media and we shouldn’t forget that. I’m not advocating anything.

  • Unless you can tell me how much they spent for the Internet advertising as a portion of their total budget, then you can’t really say whether it was a failure or not based on your argument. Even the $5M you’re bandying around is a guess and probably not a good one. If Sam Jackson in a film nobody’s interested in is worth $10M opening weekend, then FORMULA 51 should have done more business. But instead, it did close to $6M in adjusted ticket sales. So really, the Net might have accounted for $9M. But regardless, I say yes, it was a failure…of being able to translate the audience’s buzz into ticket sales. Again–we’ll watch the DVD sales to see. And mostly my podcast was talking about THE HOLLYWOOD PERCEPTION of failure and why SOAP not doing better was important. So you can say it wasn’t a failure all you want, in the end, it’s Hollywood’s perception that shapes the biz, not reality. So.