Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office

cybercuzco writes "The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks. Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image. Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future."

Hrrmmm

[mao che minh]

So, earning $131,164,155 in the United States alone [the-numbers.com] and breaking sales records [nwsource.com] is considered poor sales? Incredible. =)

This is yet another example...

[Phydoux]

... of how the Internet and the way that it connects people together is causing big changes in our culture both at a national level and globally.

I'm not saying that IM is solely responsible for the "lackluster" showing of movies, like the article insinuates.

When I think about it, the Internet really has changed my way of life. Of course I was always into the online scene (I frequented Quantum Link on my C64 back in the day, and enjoyed the online communities on BBS systems.) With the Internet I'm even more plugged-in. I can't remember the last time I send an actual paper letter via postal mail. I hardly watch TV news anymore; I get my news on the 'net.

The Internet really has been and will continue to be a driving force behind cultural changes. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can either hop on and enjoy the ride, or fall behind the times.

Re:addendum:

[uncoveror]

IMDB readers rated Gigli as the worst film of all time. [imdb.com] Even Ed Wood movies don't suck nearly as bad. Word-of-mouth whether spoken, or through text messaging has always been the most influential form of review. If banning PDAs and cellphones from theatres is the MPAA's plan now, it won't work. The few who actually pay to see terrible movies will still warn us off as soon as they leave.

You Say that as a Joke, But...

[FreeUser]

So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.

You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that

• copyright is the only thing in the constitution that is explicitly allowed to trump freedom of the press (i.e. freedom of speech).
  Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
• Copyright was later "reformed" in the Statute of Anne to give authors rights theoretically equal to those of the (by then) entrenched publishing cartel. This is the point in history that copyright advocates will try to pass off as the "beginning" of copyright, ignoring its much darker, earlier past, and the original reason for its inception: censorship.
• That same publishing cartel ignored the statute and fought it in the courts for nearly a century thereafter, before the highest court ruled they had to respect author's rights and pay to publish their works.
• It was this form of copyright that was encoded into the US constitution, with a significant change: said copyright was intended to be for a limited time, indeed, it was the intention of the founding fathers that it be a very limited time: originally 14 years plus an option to extend for another 14 years if the author was still living.
• Copyright, even in its original form, was hardly benign. Under the guise of insuring that authors and publishers receive compensation (since when is a government mandated monopoly a requirement for one to get compensation?), information in the age of the printing press was quite stringently controlled, both in the British empire and, within a generation after the ratification of the US constitution, in the United States.
• Copyright in its original form only applied to books. It's purview was then extended dramatically to include
  • cartography (maps)
  • sheet music
  • player piano music encodings
  • grammophone and other recordings
  • photographs
  • moving pictures
  • executable instructions (software)
• Copyright was also extended numerous times in duration, now reaching life+70 years for individuals and 90 years for works-for-hire, with no end in sight now that the supreme court has ruled that retroactive extentions are now "constitutional", despite the obvious conflict that entails with the constitutions own requirement that terms be of limited length.
• In addition, government has extended copyright's authority, making it a criminal offense for the first time in this nation's 200 year history, giving individual copyright cartels and corporations police and judicial powers to issue subpeonas and have people arrested, and banning certain creative works and expressions outright (anything that can be construed to circumvent a copy restriction scheme, which includes haiku poems describing how to decrypt DVDs for playback on Linux systems).
• The DMCA allows web sites and persons to be silenced as a result of mere allegations of copyright violation, with no due process, no trial, no conviction, no proof required, and no opportunity for appeal. Copyright has come full circle, returning to its origins as the primary means of modern day censorship.

The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf

Re:let's blame everything but the obvious....

[dnoyeb]

Once again, sing it with me now, "RTFA."

The movie industry suggested summer movies were just as sucky last year. Will you disagree?

They suggest that the warning of suckage is being disbursed much faster due to text messaging. As a result the impact of hyping garbage just to "buy your gross" as they put it, no longer is working.

While they don't disagree with the message, they still want the messenger dead.

I have a few ideas.

1. SPAM the text messaging system.
2. Halt the trading of text messages during the opening of high budget movies.

Re:In other news...

[renderhead]

*Sigh*

That's a popular myth, but it simply doesn't wash. Check out the article that snopes.com did on why New Coke wasn't a marketing ploy to sell classic Coke [snopes.com].

Wait till they find out about mrcranky.com!

[melted]

Wait till they find out about mrcranky.com!

Re:Yep

[barista]

I think its called "astroturfing" - essentially a fake "grassroots" effort.

Re:RTFA

[Mattcelt]

but they never advocated anything of the time - it was simply a guy making an observation

Well, if they weren't on record [slashdot.org] already trying [slashdot.org] to limit [slashdot.org] or take away [slashdot.org] our freedoms [slashdot.org], rights, [slashdot.org] and liberties, [slashdot.org] I think the /. community would be a little bit kinder.

Don't you?

Oh, and here [slashdot.org] are a couple of extras [slashdot.org] for [slashdot.org]
good measure.

Re:You Say that as a Joke, But...

[wozster]

"Do you know of a good book that goes into more depth on these issues?"

This one is a good start [amazon.com]

Re:Communication a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Abolish free speech? That's exactly what they've done in Texas where food is concerned. As Oprah Winfrey found to her cost, anyone who says anything bad about Texan beef risks being hauled into court for 'defamation.' See Fast Food Nation [amazon.com] - The dark side of the all American meal. By Eric Schlosser.

If Big Food can trample over your constitutional right to free speech, don't be surprised if Hollywood tries to get away with it too.

As the TV ad says, "Freedom - Cherish it - defend it."

the AICN plant population

[sTalking_Goat]

Just visit AICN and look at the amount of plant reveiws. The first three reviews for LXG is a good example. Three reveiws in a row all exactly three paragraphs long. All conspicously mentioning Connery's age. One of them even going as far to call it the greatest movie of the summer.

These viral marketing people have been around for a while. I give them a few months to catch up with this text messaging thing and find some way to use it to there advantage.Hopefully the people who pay attention will continue to see it for what it is.

For idiots too incompetent to google

[FreeUser]

Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.

For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:

The US Constitution [cornell.edu]

clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;


And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:

Findlaw's Tretise [findlaw.com] of US copyright law.

Re:addendum:

[Vonsrdmn]

Here's a histogram [comcast.net] of the top 100 and bottom 100 movies according to IMDB, shown by year of release. The data is probably biased towards more crap recently, but here it is, FWIV.
Raw Data here [comcast.net]

Re:Communication a problem?

[Pharmboy]

I see only one problem with your arguments about the MPAA dinosaur-- at present they seem to have a stranglehold on screens. I don't know enough about how the industry operates or to what extent the MPAA actually owns theatres, but when the only movies the huge megaplexes will play are the ones distributed by the MPAA juggernaut, then moviegoers will never have a choice about what they see.

What you say is true but they do have choices: Don't go at all. This is what many are doing, instead renting dvd's, which makes movie makers less money, or buying dvds used. Or pirating them. Or watching less movies.

To be honest, what keeps most people from pirating movies is there are so few worth downloading for free.

the heart of the issue (FROM THE ARTICLE!)

[holy_smoke]

is that the gig is up.

1970's,80's,90's...Used to be that you could market a sucky movie to death and garner decent profits from all the sheeple that rush to see it based on that marketing.

Fast forward to today...enter Screenit.com, IMDB, (insert one of tons of movie review sites here).com. A huge percent of folks are online now, and they are learning about and using these sites to make better choices. So what's the problem?? LMAO (from the article):

"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience."

Translation for the double-speak impaired: "We used to could lie faster than the truth could come out so it didn't matter whether the movie sucked or not, we could still make money."

Cry me a river you arrogant dork.

Re:This just in!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is standard practice. A couple of years ago I heard about this and started asking every ticket salesperson and usher I met what they thought; those were the only two answers I could get.

Re:You Say that as a Joke, But...

[LUDO54]

Sarah Vowell did a piece a few weeks back on This American Life about the whole sordid history of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Give it a listen [thisamericanlife.org]

Re:this movie stinks

[nzilla]

I know everyone probably already knows about it, but I like to use Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com] instead of/in addition to IMDb. IMDb is great for finding out information and how popular a movie was, but the ratings and the reviews can just be written by anybody so they're more often than not very unintelligent. Rotten Tomatoes tallies up professional critics' responses. I also listen to Ebert and Roeper's audio reviews [ebertandroeper.tv] every week. Sometimes they're way off, but they're fairly reasonable most of the time. Still, I give Rotten Tomatoes more weight. I recently found out about m o v i e l e n s [umn.edu], which uses an algorithm to guess what you'd rate movies based on previous ratings. You have to spend a lot of time rating initially for the ratings to be accurate. I find it pretty accurate, though occasionally it will be way off with movies you hate or love for weird reasons. It gave Antitrust a low rating for me, but I gave it five stars based just on how much I enjoyed the fantasy of taking down Microsoft (*sigh*), and it gave a high rating for Atarnajuat: The Fast Runner, which I absolutely abhorred due to the terrible amateurish filming and editing.