How instant communication affects movies at the box office

It's been a while since I've picked up on an article describing how text messaging spreads instant reviews of new movie releases - making or breaking them at the box office.

Lately, Calender Live [via digg ] writes: "Instant communications technology has completely changed the role of word of mouth," says Nancy Utley, chief operating officer for "Little Miss Sunshine ".

Recommendations from friends and associates always have been a critical ingredient in building box-office momentum, just as negative word of mouth accelerates a middling movie's downfall. Yet the speed at which such assessments are transmitted has never been so fast, nor the effect — as "Little Miss Sunshine" is dramatizing — so profound.

Movie studios once felt confident they had at least two weekends to sell as many movie tickets as possible before toxic buzz would undermine their multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Hollywood executives now say that the proliferation of movie-related e-mail, Internet blogs and text messaging has reduced that window to mere hours, as the quick decline of last weekend's heavily promoted "Snakes on a Plane" proved"

Related:

-- High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies - The LA Times (August 2003) looks at how word of mouth has long been an element in a film's success or failure. But bad buzz, fueled by text messaging and the internet has accelerated the pace of communication so much that Hollywood feels the reverberations at the box office almost immediately.

SMS Word of mouth kills Hollywood box office - More on the LA Times (August 2003) article (no longer online) on the impact of SMS and other forms of mobile messaging on opening weekend box office receipts for major feature films.

emily | 7:59 AM | SMS and The Movies |
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