Bloomberg is projecting that SoaP will top the box-office during its opening weekend with a take of just over 15 million. As expected, the media backlash has begun. Reuters stated that Soap 'failed to charm', and added "So much for the Internet hype.".Again, I figured the MSM was going to take their shots at this movie if they had the chance. This was a story that originated on the internet, was created by the internet, and MSM had to sit at the kiddie table for this one. They didn't care for that, and if the opportunity presented itself to take potshots at 'internet hype', I figured they wouldn't miss the chance.
Apparently, a bad B-movie being pushed to the top of the box-office on opening weekend, is a sign that 'internet hype' doesn't work.
BTW, a Google-Juice update shows there are now a staggering 48 million search results for "Snakes on a Plane". Wow.
5 comments:
Internet hype is no better than MSM hype, and a bad movie is a bad movie. It's refreshing to see that people are going to see the movies they want to see (step up) and not what people are telling them is cool. SOAP is all of the internet as much for ridicule as for genuine interest.
Hollywood Reporter puts SoAP as falling short of expectations:
"For the first time all summer, the tracking on the movie was spot on," New Line distribution president David Tuckerman said. "We thought we'd overperform on the tracking so are a little disappointed right now."
Personally, I agree with you. 15m is not bad for a B-movie made around ~30m. Not bad at all.
I saw the movie and enjoyed it because of the audience participation. It wont be entertaining to watch anywhere else but a packed rambunctious theatre.
Technically SoaP probably came in 2nd, since Thursday night showings were (wrongly) included in the gross, but 1st or 2nd, that's not really the issue.
The issue is that SoaP will perform on par or better than the average R-rated film did in 2005. And this is without a major off-line push by the studio. There was no huge advertising effort. In fact, the effort that the studio did put forth consisted largely of a lame trailer.
If they had released it as a PG-13 film it would have done twice the business, but I think the studio looked to SoaP as a test of internet-based marketing and were largely happy with they outcome.
The film will do more than $100 million for the studio when DVD is included -- and they didn't have to spend $20m in marketing to get there. Face it, the bloggers carried the studio's water.
I attended a 10pm showing on Thursday with my 14 year old son. It wasn't as bad as I expected. He was largely non-plussed. The crowd, however, was lighter than anticipated by the theater. My son's friends who wanted to see the film were not able to attend due to the rating.
Couldn't agree with you more. I wish we could have done a clean test to see how much a PG-13 "Pacific flight 121" would have made and then measure that against the $15M from this weekend. I have a feeling the overseas + DVD sales combo for the film will still make it a solid earner despite the medias so called "Disappointing" first weekend.
The question that no one is asking is: What would have been SoaP's opening if they had instead sent 'cease and desist' orders to Brian Finklestein back in January and told him to shut Snakes on a Blog down?
Whatever that opening would have been, subtract it from the 15.3 million that SoaP opened with, and the result is the value that New Line realized on opening weekend by embracing bloggers.
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