Well, Eminem apparently has finally earned the right to star in a movie, joining such hitmakers as Britney, Mariah, Madonna, and Mandy Moore. It’s called “8 Mile” and now you know everything I do about it.
Except that the advertisers decided that a great advertising technique would be buying out every ad slot on YahooMail. All day yesterday and today the only ads I get on YahooMail are for “8 Mile”. I’m constantly seeing the tagline: “Every Moment is Another Chance.” Despite this, I still am not going to see the movie, but they’re at least trying.
It seems that pummel per-release marketing is now the technique du jour for advertising movies. “The Four Feathers” ran TV ads approximately once every thirteen seconds for three weeks before the movie actually came out. I’m not one who follows box office, so I don’t know for sure how this affected things, but I can imagine: huge opening weekend, followed by a sharp drop-off.
That’s the name of the game in the era of only giving a damn about the opening weekend. Get the people into the theater before they have a chance to hear how mediocre the film is. I think someone would ask themselves what is going wrong when they feel they have to fool people into consuming their product, but what do I know?
Anyway, a semi-coherent observation on movie marketing. Sorry, need another cup of coffee and then maybe I can bring this thing together.
The distributor (the movie studio, or the company that bought rights to distribute the independently-produced movie) and the exhibitor (the actual cinema where the movie plays) split the box-office proceeds on a sliding scale. Toward the beginning of the movie’s run, the distributor gets almost all of the ticket price (minus an overhead slice). The longer the movie runs, the more of the ticket price the exhibitor gets to keep. More detailed explanation here.
Therefore, you can see that it’s in the movie studio’s best interest to make as much of the film’s total box office as close to the beginning of the run as possible. Movie analysts have a bunch of formulas they can apply to estimate a film’s ultimate performance based on the first couple of days. (The exceptions, like Big Fat Greek Wedding, which they predicted wouldn’t make more than ten million at the outside, drive them nuts.)
And further, given how crummy studio movies have been getting lately, it’s additionally in their best interest to make as much money as possible before word of mouth starts getting around. Make the movie an event, one that certain segments of the population must participate in to be considered “with it,” and everybody goes to see it right away. Did you ask any 14-year-olds why they all went to see Scooby-Doo opening weekend? “Didn’t you know it would suck?” - “Yeah, shrug, but everybody was going.”
The more advertising outlets there are, the more ubiquitous and unavoidable the saturation marketing will become. There are actually ATMs that will play quick 10-second movie previews while you’re waiting for your cash to be dispensed. They’re only being tested in limited markets for now, but expect to see them in your neighborhood within a couple of years.
Yes, it sucks. No, it isn’t going to change any time soon.
By the way, 8 Mile is actually supposed to be pretty good, if audience reaction from the Toronto Film Festival can be believed.
FYI
If anyone’s interested, 8 Mile is a major road just north of Detroit. I figured someone who lives where they don’t use mile roads might not get it.
One of the few things that truly bugs me about current culture is the fact that any non-sponsored waking moment we have in contact with others exists solely because someone else hasn’t figured out a way to exploit the moment for monetary gain.
Well, more importantly for the movie is the fact that 8 mile is the northern border of Detroit. hence the line in the commercial “Take your white ass back across 8 mile”
Definitely, 8 Mile signifies a racial division as much as a city border.
The late mayor Coleman Young once told suburbanites to get out of Detroit by hitting 8 Mile (can’t remember the exact quote).
It’s a lovely street that all visitors should see
I thought I was the only one who felt this. Why do we have Enron Field, The Staples Center, but no Tampax Arena?
