Social Media and the Movies

I live in Hollywood. Ground zero for the movie business.

It used to be that a movie came out and you decided whether you wanted to see it by a trailer you saw before another movie or because you read or watched a review by a noted film critic.

Not any more.

If you happened to scan your Facebook page recently or scoured your Twitter feed, you'd notice a lot of chatter about movies. Some scathing about Bruno, some lukewarm for Public Enemies, some glowing for Harry Potter or The Hangover.

One more reason not to read a newspaper, right?

I trust Kenneth Turan, the LA Times film critic, but I trust my friend Matt more. I like watching the two Ben's on At the Movies, but I trust my sister even more. And now I can see how they all really feel about these flicks 5 minutes after the movie is over.

We're living in a world of instant information. But even more important, we're living in a world of instant word of mouth.

Per Time Magazine this week:

In the old days — like, until yesterday — movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. But in the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers tweet their opinions on a film to millions of "followers." Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the new weekend.

Mashable recapped and expanded on that Time article quite nicely with this article: "Did Opening Night Twitter Reviews Sink Bruno's Weekend Box Office?"

According to box office results, Brüno, albeit the number one grossing movie at the box office pulling in $30.4 million, saw almost a 40% drop in ticket sales from Friday to Saturday, and lost even more steam going into Sunday. And Time thinks Twitter might be to blame claiming that “Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect.”

So what changed between Friday and Saturday? Only one thing: people actually saw the movie. With the advent and popularity of instantaneous feedback via social media, especially Twitter, would-be moviegoers could have been heavily influenced by those who were offended, shocked, or simply not entertained by the in-your-face homosexual content and turned to Twitter to post their opinions. After all, Brüno has been a trending topic on Twitter for several days, which means millions of users were exposed to the real-time feedback of those who watched the movie.

Meanwhile another Mashable article titled "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: A Social Media Blockbuster?" speaks to the heightened activity that big films receive right before their premier dates. In the case of the new Harry Potter movie, the velocity of Twitter posts and stories on Google shot up dramatically the week of the release.

There were 47,149 posts yesterday, but just two days ago, it was under 20,000. Is this just people very hyped to see the movie, or has the buzz been weak until just before the premiere? Google search results seem to have taken the same type of dramatic climb, with 1,300,000 new results in Google in just the last few days:

There's nothing Hollywood can do about this. Well, you might argue that Hollywood can make only great movies. But that would be difficult and extremely subjective. Regardless, you can't deny that the public's voice keeps getting louder and more powerful.