The Change Mariner

Hollywood finds itself at the mercy of cellphone-toting teenagers

Cape Times:

In Hollywood, 2003 is rapidly becoming known as the year of the failed blockbuster, and the industry now thinks it knows why.

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The problem, they say, is teenagers instant-messaging their friends with their verdict on new films - sometimes while they are still in the cinema watching - and so scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns designed to lure audiences out to a big movie on its opening weekend.

"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross'," said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax.

"You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth because it took time to filter out into the general audience."

But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for moviegoers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money.

Five years ago, when summer movies were arguably just as bad as they are now, the average audience drop-off between a film's opening weekend and its second weekend was 40%. This summer it has been 51%.