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Facebook's "Highlight" Feature Lets You Pay To Send Messages To Friends - Business Insider
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Your startup?s top 3 priorities. | ex post facto
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05/17/12, 35
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05/17/12, 05
The Facebook Offering: How It Compares - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
05/17/12, 44
Your startup?s top 3 priorities. | ex post facto
05/17/12, 40
Pretty Lights - You Get High NYE 2011 Denver Video Recap - YouTube
05/17/12, 11
Going East For Money, Pinterest Refuses To 'Bow At The Alter Of Amazon Or Google' - Business Insider
05/17/12, 19
Where The Wild Avengers Are
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Wednesday, October 5. 2005
Hollywood Admits Its Movies Flop
A few days ago, I was discussing with a friend about new movies. The general consensus is that there really aren't any movies in theaters that are worth going to see. When I look back this year, I can't really recall any movie that I desperately wanted to see in theaters. Most movies have been designated as 'renters' in my mind (if even).
Hollywood had come up with a million excuses blaming poor movie sales. They blame rising gas prices, movie piracy, etc. The funniest of all this was Hollywood blaming instant messengers and text messaging from cellphones for slumping movie sales.
Their rationale:
This is of course crazy since word of mouth is a powerful medium. If a movie was really bad, I am going to tell my friends. Using an instant messenger is no different from me calling up my friends via telephone and telling them that a movie sucked. Maybe if we banned instant messengers, telephones, and cellphones, movie sales would go up
.
In either case, it looks like Hollywood executives are finally admitting that their movies aren't good. The article is entitled, "Flops Caused Box Office Slump."
I agree that it's possible for movies to succeed without flashy advertisements, and rely mostly on word of mouth. The Passion of The Christ was a fairly good example of this. People were talking about it because of the controversy surrounding it. The movie had a very small advertising campaign, and many movie theaters said they wouldn't carry such a movie. Yet, the movie raked in $370 million in the box offices.
I also agree that people prefer to watch movies in the comfort of their own homes with friends and family. It's far more economical. Renting a movie which will be viewed by 4 people will cost $7. Watching a movie in theaters with 4 people will cost at least $36. In addition, home television/theater systems are becoming more and more sophisticated and accessible to the general population, so watching DVDs at home are going to become more and more appealing.
Looking forward, I don't really see any films that I really want to see in theaters. The last film that I was hyped up about was probably The Matrix Revolutions and The Lord of The Rings, Return of the King.
2003 was a good movie year.
Hollywood had come up with a million excuses blaming poor movie sales. They blame rising gas prices, movie piracy, etc. The funniest of all this was Hollywood blaming instant messengers and text messaging from cellphones for slumping movie sales.
Their rationale:
Movie studios claim that the habit of spreading the bad words about movies to your friends after you've seen a movie that you considered as a "not worth paying for" is to blame. And specifically the new technologies, such as instant messaging and mobile phone text messages (SMS) are to blame.
This is of course crazy since word of mouth is a powerful medium. If a movie was really bad, I am going to tell my friends. Using an instant messenger is no different from me calling up my friends via telephone and telling them that a movie sucked. Maybe if we banned instant messengers, telephones, and cellphones, movie sales would go up
.In either case, it looks like Hollywood executives are finally admitting that their movies aren't good. The article is entitled, "Flops Caused Box Office Slump."
One of Hollywood's basic tenets is that when things go wrong it's somebody else's fault.
Which is why it's so startling, suddenly, to hear studio executives and producers taking responsibility for the rows of empty seats in movie theaters this year.
"It's really easy for all of us to blame the condition of the theaters, gas prices, alternative media, the population changes and everything else I've heard myself say," said Sony Pictures Vice Chairman Amy Pascal, whose summer releases "Bewitched" and "Stealth" flopped. "I think it has to do with the movies themselves."
After months of hand-wringing and doomsday forecasts about the permanent erosion of moviegoing, the lunchtime chatter at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills and other industry haunts has turned decidedly inward. Now, four straight weekends of crowded theaters have forced moguls and creative executives to admit in public what they have spent months avoiding: They were clueless about what audiences wanted.
"There's always a year when the pundits say the movie business is over," said producer Brian Grazer, whose May release "Cinderella Man" was a disappointment despite strong reviews. "If there's a movie people want to see, they go see it. I just think we all have to do our best to make better movies."
...
Nobody is predicting that 2005 will beat last year's record gross of $9.4 billion and attendance of 1.5 billion, which was driven by such hits as "Shrek 2," "Spider-Man 2," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the surprise blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ." And this weekend may well fall short of a year ago, when the animated comedy "Shark Tale" surged to $47 million.
...
So much for the irreversible trends that prognosticators have spent months bemoaning. Amid 19 weekends of diminished box office — a record stretch that started in late February and ended in early July — many said they believed a cultural sea change was underway. Among the theories: People preferred to consume their entertainment in the comfort of their homes, whether watching DVDs on super-sharp plasma screens, surfing the Internet or playing video games.
...
All along, theater owners said they knew better. Audiences, they contended, were weary of films with lame plots whose advertising campaigns seemed to be better thought out than their story lines. They pointed to such sleeper hits as the documentary "March of the Penguins," which drew huge crowds via word of mouth without the benefit of splashy marketing, as evidence that if you give them a good reason, people will get in their cars, drive to theaters and pay dearly for a tub of popcorn.
Which is why it's so startling, suddenly, to hear studio executives and producers taking responsibility for the rows of empty seats in movie theaters this year.
"It's really easy for all of us to blame the condition of the theaters, gas prices, alternative media, the population changes and everything else I've heard myself say," said Sony Pictures Vice Chairman Amy Pascal, whose summer releases "Bewitched" and "Stealth" flopped. "I think it has to do with the movies themselves."
After months of hand-wringing and doomsday forecasts about the permanent erosion of moviegoing, the lunchtime chatter at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills and other industry haunts has turned decidedly inward. Now, four straight weekends of crowded theaters have forced moguls and creative executives to admit in public what they have spent months avoiding: They were clueless about what audiences wanted.
"There's always a year when the pundits say the movie business is over," said producer Brian Grazer, whose May release "Cinderella Man" was a disappointment despite strong reviews. "If there's a movie people want to see, they go see it. I just think we all have to do our best to make better movies."
...
Nobody is predicting that 2005 will beat last year's record gross of $9.4 billion and attendance of 1.5 billion, which was driven by such hits as "Shrek 2," "Spider-Man 2," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the surprise blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ." And this weekend may well fall short of a year ago, when the animated comedy "Shark Tale" surged to $47 million.
...
So much for the irreversible trends that prognosticators have spent months bemoaning. Amid 19 weekends of diminished box office — a record stretch that started in late February and ended in early July — many said they believed a cultural sea change was underway. Among the theories: People preferred to consume their entertainment in the comfort of their homes, whether watching DVDs on super-sharp plasma screens, surfing the Internet or playing video games.
...
All along, theater owners said they knew better. Audiences, they contended, were weary of films with lame plots whose advertising campaigns seemed to be better thought out than their story lines. They pointed to such sleeper hits as the documentary "March of the Penguins," which drew huge crowds via word of mouth without the benefit of splashy marketing, as evidence that if you give them a good reason, people will get in their cars, drive to theaters and pay dearly for a tub of popcorn.
I agree that it's possible for movies to succeed without flashy advertisements, and rely mostly on word of mouth. The Passion of The Christ was a fairly good example of this. People were talking about it because of the controversy surrounding it. The movie had a very small advertising campaign, and many movie theaters said they wouldn't carry such a movie. Yet, the movie raked in $370 million in the box offices.
I also agree that people prefer to watch movies in the comfort of their own homes with friends and family. It's far more economical. Renting a movie which will be viewed by 4 people will cost $7. Watching a movie in theaters with 4 people will cost at least $36. In addition, home television/theater systems are becoming more and more sophisticated and accessible to the general population, so watching DVDs at home are going to become more and more appealing.
Looking forward, I don't really see any films that I really want to see in theaters. The last film that I was hyped up about was probably The Matrix Revolutions and The Lord of The Rings, Return of the King.
2003 was a good movie year.
--Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)