Luck: Always playing at a theater near you

by Larry Bills, August 22nd, 2006, 7:00 am

The release of New Line’s Snakes on a Plane last weekend got me thinking about movie marketing and its place in Hollywood. The subtly titled film is arguably the most marketing-friendly movie ever made, and its disappointing opening weekend box office take (only $15 million) confirms my long-held belief that success on the silver screen owes more to blind luck than laser-focused marketing.

It’s impossible to throw a rock in Tinseltown these days and not bean some focus group obsessed marketing suit determined to give film audiences exactly what he claims they want. He’s the creepy guy sitting in the back of the theater during test screenings, furiously scribbling notes on instances of audiences not laughing when they should have, or worse, laughing when they shouldn’t have (a frequent occurrence anytime Hayden Christiansen opened his mouth in a Star Wars film).

Creepy guy then gives his notes to the studio, which in turn demands reshoots or a new ending from a seriously annoyed director. Yes, I’m going to be all pompous and validate the director’s argument that the studio is killing his artistic-spirit (I am a writer after all).

Audiences are fickle things, and all the time and money studios spend trying to figure them out is largely wasted. Take 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl as a case study. When Disney first announced the project, rivals sniggered and pointed at what was sure to be a bomb. Not only was it a pirate movie, which historically have been as popular as Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah, it was based on a theme park ride for God’s sake. Johnny Depp’s bizarre, pickled-in-rum performance as the main character made Disney execs so nervous they demanded he ease it back (to no avail). Keira Knightly admitted she expected the movie to be crap. So what happened? The film was great fun, it racked up $305 million at the box office, and Depp got an Oscar nod. This year’s sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, is a monster hit, currently sailing past $400 million in the US alone.

Most of the evidence for the luck factor comes from small budget sleepers. These movies aren’t meddled with by the studio marketing system because there’s no real expectation for them to be successful. Then they come out of nowhere and make piles of cash, only to spawn crappy copycats based on, yes, new marketing studies. There’s an endless parade of these films: The Blair Witch Project, Barbershop, School of Rock, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Napoleon Dynamite, and on and on. There was no way to predict their success. It just happened.

In the end, SoaP’s flimsy grosses make me kind of happy. I don’t have a problem with the movie, Samuel L. Jackson, or snakes for that matter (as long as they’re not in the same room or plane as me). I’m happy because studios will be less tempted to engage in this type of stunt on a larger scale. Not having to endure the hype surrounding next summer’s Snakes on a Tugboat will be a relief.