Don’t Believe The Hype?

When I opened my mailbox Saturday and pulled out my Entertainment Weekly the article that grabbed my attention first talked about the failure of internet hype for movies translating to box office. Obviously the most recent example of this was my beloved Snakes on a Plane. Despite blogs, internet merchandising, and preview clips all over YouTube the movie failed to open big. EW speculated that a similar fate awaited this weekend’s opening of Borat. Like SoaP, Borat had an aggressive internet campaign by the studio along with a grass roots internet movement of fans. Last week the studio leaked the first 4 minutes of the flick and it seemed the hype had reached a fever pitch. However the studio sensed all was not well and decided a few days before the opening to scale back the amount of screens Borat was on by 1200. Was their worry warranted? Happily it was not. Borat opened with a strong 26 million and was only on about a quarter of the screens that second place Santa Clause 3 commanded. This is remarkable considering it’s an R rated flick and that it translated it’s internet hype.

So I guess the real question is do internet campaigns work? The makers of Blair Witch would say yes and apparently so would the Borat folks. I guess I'm not so sure. These are the two exceptions and what do they both have in common...they were movies that you'd never seen before. You're probably thinking, "Wait I'd never seen snakes attack people on a plane before either." While you'd be right in that respect, we have seen multiple movies where your hero has to find a way to land a plane while some kind of mutherfuckin' obstacle makes his or her life a living hell. Again I'm a SoaP diehard but let's face facts, the movie itself was certainly not groundbreaking. Borat and Blair Witch are two films that had a style and originality all their own and that's why the buzz translated to box office. Now I just realized that I spent 20 minutes writing pretty much the same thing EW already said. Damn they're good.