Wednesday, November 16, 2011

SURE TO BE BETTER THAN THIS YEAR'S OTHER MOVIE ABOUT A ZOOKEEPER: Fox is pulling a surprising move with We Bought a Zoo--it's not blinking from a December 23 release date (which puts it up against Tintin, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the wide release of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, with War Horse following two days later)--instead, it's going to sneak the movie for paying audiences next weekend to try and build up goodwill. This seems to me a silly decision--if the movie's ready, why not release it earlier (say, this weekend, when the other wide options are Happy Feet Two and Sparklevamps Finally Get It On, or any other weekend in December, where the mainstream adult options are pretty thin)?

10 comments:

  1. Week-before sneak previews used to be more common; this month-before sneak isn't.  But I agree with waiting to release it until the holiday break -- attendance is ridiculously higher then.

    ReplyDelete
  2. isaac_spaceman4:54 PM

    Why?  Because a movie's first-week take, and to a lesser extent its second-week take, constitutes a disproportionate amount of its theatrical gross, because the weekend after Thanksgiving and Christmas weekend are far, far, far more important (i.e., have far more moviegoers) than the weeks between those two weekends, because this plan gives We Bought a Zoo two opening weekends that happen to be those critically important holiday weekends, because there is pretty robust market segregation between We Bought a Zoo, which is being marketed as a family movie, and adults-only stuff like MI and Sadistic Sex Mystery, because opening it this weekend would put it up against other family fare (Happy Feet Two), and, most importantly, because marketing and promotional campaigns are planned months or years ahead of time so that audience awareness of a movie builds right up until the release date, which has to coincide with other marketing events (tie-ins, cross-platform marketing, ad buys).  For example, if someone made a contract to put out twenty million McDonald's tray-liners with We Bought a Zoo-themed puzzles on them, or if somebody already printed a hundred thousand one-sheets that say "This Christmas: We Bought a Zoo" with a zebra with a gift-wrap bow around its neck, or if someone has booked a zoo for a promotional extravaganza, then that someone cannot move the date. 

    Movies are like container ships.  They carry hundreds of millions of dollars of freight, and it takes forever to turn them. 

    ReplyDelete
  3. Benner6:55 PM

    Is 'We bought a zoo" really competing with adult film, mainstream or otherwise?  I don't want to know about said zoo.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JosephFinn7:02 PM

    And honestly, of that group it looks to me like the best option.  (Sorry, all of you talented people involved in Tin Tin, but motion capture of that kind creeps me the right out.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. bella wilfer7:51 PM

    ...a lot of times doing an advance sneak for word of mouth like this means the movie is absolutely not tracking (people aren't aware of the movie, much less interested), which is a very bad thing 5 weeks out.  I bet they're freaking out.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tin Tin is very, very pretty. And that is the nicest thing I have to say about it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. (Sigh)  I don't typically like performance capture, but I was hopeful given Steven Moffat's involvement.

    ReplyDelete
  8. JosephFinn9:06 AM

    And then there's where I started laughing during a commercial for My Pony Goes Off To France last night, which is not a good sign either.  "But she's my horse, sir!"  "I'll look after her."  I so wanted that last line to be delivered in a Graham Chapman-esque British voice.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sparklevamps Finally Get It On!

    *dies laughing*

    ReplyDelete
  10. The trailer for War Horse makes me think of this hilarious NPH moment:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7iCcLHJT0U

    ReplyDelete