Box Office: People Are Talking About ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ Scores
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Projections said ‘Jurassic World’ would do 60% of what it made opening weekend.
‘Terminator: Genisys’ fell short by 25%.
And, poorly reviewed movies tanked at the box office as Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) buzz and Rotten Tomatoes destroyed careful marketing campaigns and execs began to question pre-release surveys.
“Maybe we need to re-examine the methodology.” says one studio marketing executive.
The Summer of Y 2015 will go down as the box-office season of the haves and havenots.
Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA) which until this year had not released a billion-dollar-grossing film, opened 3 from April through July: Furious 7, Jurassic World and Minions.
Warner Bros. a unit of Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), and Sony (NYSE:SNE) suffered this Summer.
The season’s lone constant was that tracking, the pre-release radar of the movie business, malfunctioned weekend after weekend, appearing as if broken. Summer domestic box office revenue may hit $4.4-B, tying with Y 2011 as the 2nd-biggest Summer of all time after Y 2013 at $4.9-B, but it was an especially bumpy ride.
A a number of films opened to a 33 or 50% of what pre-release tracking indicated despite expensive marketing campaigns.
Jurassic World, on the other hand, breezed past domestic opening-weekend forecasts of $125-M. The lack of predictability can strain a studio’s relationship with talent and prompt internal finger-pointing as to what went wrong.
Tracking the box office has become increasingly unreliable during the age of social media, when poor reviews and buzz can knock even the most carefully calculated marketing campaign off of the tracks.
Insiders say the problem has reached a tipping point.
“This was a Summer completely designed by reviews and word-of-mouth,” says Megan Colligan, Paramount’s, a unit of Viacom (NASDAQ:VIA) president of worldwide distribution and marketing.
“I actually heard people in the grocery store talking about Rotten Tomatoes scores.”
Have some fun see a movie this weekend.
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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