Why would the moviemakers want a review embargo in the first place, though? I’d think that having reviews come out a couple of days before opening would encourage people to go see it. Well, on average, anyway: Obviously bad reviews would hurt, but most movies don’t get bad early reviews, do they?
They want the reviews to be there at the same time that people are thinking about going to the movie.
Sure, some people on Tuesday are thinking “hey, what opens this weekend and I wonder if it is any good” but most people say “hey, let’s go to a movie tonight, I’ll check what’s playing.” Hell, I’m surprised at how often I’m at a theater and there are people in line who obviously just decided to come to the theater cold and then apparently choose based on a combination of title and showtime. So a newspaper review (in the traditional world particularly) that runs on a Tuesday is going to be missed/forgotten by the time Friday runs around.
In the modern era of everything published on the internet so being just as available it is an often made argument that the embargo doesn’t much matter.
Plus, if they know the reviews aren’t going to be great, they’d rather not have them out there competing with the marketing campaign.
As for bad early reviews, for the most part all movies follow the same general review pattern. Now, when it is a glowing review the publicity department will tend to care a lot less about embargo breaking than for negative reviews. And there is a perception that way early reviews and features are trading softball reaction for access. But if the embargoes went away then that would just move the bad reviews earlier too.
That said, even if that happened, many publications would still run their reviews on opening just because the feeling is that is when the readers are most interested in reading it. My reviews run online only but I’d still run them on Fridays (assuming Friday opening) because I don’t really see any value in running them on Wednesday and I’m hardly a “taste maker” who can generate buzz (for the movie or myself) by getting out there early. Plus, since most screenings are on Tuesday, I like to have a day and a half to let a movie settle in my mind before pounding out my blather.
It’s worse than we imagined. Some reporters are now saying “After Earth” is thinly veiled Scientology propaganda. Here’s one account: ‘After Earth’ as Scientology Propaganda: What Critics Are Saying – The Hollywood Reporter
There is really no reason to watch anything but blockbusters at a movie theater, I don’t plan on watching after earth but it is the kind of movie you go to a theater to watch. Even now you see me, which i admit looks very interesting, i will wait to watch at home on dvd on netflix.
Mick LaSalle from the SF Chronicle:
M. Night Shyamalan is branching out, coming up with new ways to make bad movies. His plan must be to exhaust all possibilities so as to eventually come full circle and make a good one by accident. That fine day is still about 30 years out, so in the meantime we must amuse ourselves with After Earth…
Not if you paid me :D. I learned my lesson once and for all with The Happening, which I’m inclined to regard as the worst film of the 21rst century. And shame on me for letting myself be dragged that far - Signs should have been the wake-up call.
I still think Shyamalan has some great skills as a director. Unfortunately he works with mostly terrible scripts (usually his own). I would like to see him paired with a really good horror or science fiction script. Maybe it’ll happen again someday.
I hated that movie – but I have to give it a pass for that scene where an increasingly desperate Mark Wahlberg finally gives up and finds himself nervously offering a truce by calmly reassuring a houseplant: “Hello. My name is Elliot Moore. I’m just going to talk in a very positive manner, giving off good vibes. We’re just here to use the bathroom, and we’re just going to leave. I hope that’s okay.”
You do realize you’re just reinforcing my claim, right :p?
ETA: But I do agree with Spoke that Shyamalan has a deft touch at times. He has made good films. Just not many and not in a long time. His scriptwriting skills are beyond abysmal.
Nonsense. I spend most of my movie-watching time on small, independent movies, and there are absolutely ones that benefit from being seen on a big screen with a fully cranked sound system. I rewatched the Australian-German movie Lore at home this week, and while I loved it just as much as I did in the theater, seeing the amazing cinematography on my TV still doesn’t compare to when I saw it in a theater. I suspect the same will go for Stoker’s fantastic sound design when I rewatch that at home this month.
I totally understand why some people only watch movies at home, but on a purely aesthetic level, smaller movies can benefit from the theater-going experience just as much as the blockbusters.
Of course Will Smith isn’t going to mention MNS. That would make part of the movie buzz be about MNS and not about him and his spawn. It’s fucking Narcissism all the way down.
Yeah, mentioning MNS would’ve been one heck of an unexpected twist.
Saw Now You See Me. It was mostly fine until a bad ending. Don’t feel burned, won’t remember it in a year.
It will bomb, especially measured against production and marketing budgets.
The trailers make it look like “Jumanji 2: Electric Boogaloo.” And the CGI animals don’t look like they’ve improved much in quality either.
You are essentially correct. Embargoes vary greatly from movie to movie, and for many movies you can see reviews by bloggers springing up weeks in advance, particularly if a movie is aimed at a blogger-friendly demographic and the movie is at least decent.
Trade and newspaper reviews also can be embargoed, but usually aren’t, which is why you can find one on Thursday. When they do get an embargo it’s frequently but not universally a bad sign.
Finally, I’ve read reviews of movies that didn’t even have screenings, they were so bad.
And don’t get me started about the online reviews of print media. Sometimes those start appearing en masse early in the week, but other times they don’t appear until Friday morning. That also seems to correlate much of the time with what the reviewers have to say about the movie.
Both movies had “previews” on Thursday night.
AE was $1M and NYSM was $1.5M. Quite surprising although NYSM’s shows started at 6pm while AE’s started at 9pm so it had more slots. Not sure about screens for the previews, but AE is projected (!) to be played at 3400 screens and NYSM under 3000.
If that holds up for the weekend, AE will win (well, 2nd place after F&F6) and it will be very bad news for Sony.
Hard to compare the Thursday numbers with recent films that opened on Thursday like ST:ID and Hangover3 due to franchise history and Memorial Day weekend as well as bringing in a fraction of those film’s takes.
The Chicago Tribune is reporting* “estimates” already for Friday and extrapolated for the weekend. (Usually don’t come out until later in the day.) AE $10M on Friday and $25M for the weekend. NYSM $20 for the weekend. The latter is probably low. NYSM should beat AE based on the Thursday data.
- Might be behind an easily gotten around registration wall for some people.
Some more data.
Friday numbers are $10M for NYSM and $9.8M for AE. Both after F&F6. It is becoming more likely that NYSM will beat AE. NYSM had the best of the 3 in terms of per-screen average.
The Cinemascores for the movies are telling. NYSM is A- (a very common score) and AE is B. Note that a 6 hour video of Matt Lucas pole dancing will get a B+. Major movies don’t usually get a B unless they explicitly insult the audience.
Getting back to the OP. Clearly there were enough reviews for both movies on Friday to distinguish them from the worst of the not-prescreened-for-critics films.
Why weren’t there earlier reviews of AE? They might have tried to keep down analytic articles highlighting the CoS connection. If most critics only saw the film Thursday night, then there wasn’t time for deeper articles to appear before the weekend. In particular, the comparison to Battlefield Earth is really bad for box office.
The Thursday previews also allowed critics to see the films in time to write articles for Friday without there being official screenings.
AE, I get keeping the critics in the dark. NYSM, not so much.
AE will be an official flop. Probably won’t break even on global box office. Will have to hope for a lot of DVD money.
NYSM will make money in theaters if it plays at all well overseas. (Not a lock for a film of this type.) But it won’t have to work as hard to break even given its smaller budget. ($75M vs $130M.)
This will make The Wild, Wild West look Oscar worthy by comparison.
I found an article this morning that I thought Dopers would appreciate:
[
](http://www.theonion.com/articles/perhaps-the-gimmick-of-my-father-and-i-starring-in,32649/)
Before anyone gets too excited, that was from The Onion.
It’s a shame if the movie is bad, but not too important. It’s the kind of thing you go to see space ships and squirrel suits for, not the story.