ZDONK

David Poland writes one of my favorite blogs about the entertainment industry, and he wrote a particularly interesting article yesterday about the Twitter Effect (equally as interesting is the discussion in the comments that somehow veered into an intense discussion about Justin Bieber). He holds an enthusiastic opinion that the Twitter Effect is overblown. I agree.

The first time I remember hearing about this “powerful” force was during the release of Bruno. Supposedly the film’s drop off after a strong Friday opening had everything to do with this Twitter Effect. People saw the movie, bad mouthed it in a 144 characters or less, and the movie sputtered out. Really?

While Twitter could have been one of the mediums for which the negative word of mouth spread, it can hardly be blamed (or given credit for, however you want to look at it) for the demise of the film.

Here’s the thing: for the Twitter Effect to be a force to be reckoned with in the movie marketing world, it needs to be proved that Twitter creates meaningful interactions between strangers that lead to people buying, or not buying, tickets. Do execs really think their target audience is doing a Twitter Search on a Friday night for their movie, looking at the most recent tweets from strangers around the world, and then making their movie-going decision?

If someone uses Twitter in their decision making, it is probably to hear what the people they follow have to say about the film. If that’s the case, it’s hardly a “Twitter Effect” — it’s just people contacting their friends and getting a reliable film review from a person they trust.

The irony of the situation is that social media created a way for people to get information, like film reviews, from like-minded individuals and people they trusted, as opposed to a random film critic with drastically different taste. If the “Twitter Effect” were to really exist, it would be two steps backwards — not only are you getting a film review from a random individual, but this random individual is writing the review with no credibility and in 144 characters or less.

By the way, this discussion started by talking about Lionsgate’s multi-platform digital marketing strategy for KICK ASS. I had lunch with a Lionsgate employee last week who has seen the film and he says that it’s going to be huge (he has no reason to lie and doesn’t know we have a blog).

I hope David Poland is willing to laugh when “The Twitter Effect” is given partial credit for the film’s success…

At the rate we’re going, it’s estimated in the year 2014, every new movie will actually be an old movie that’s been converted into 3D, and re-released into theaters. Although there is no truth to that statement, the fact that you considered it for a split second is a little scary.

Hollywood has all but given up on original ideas. With the added box office revenues from 3D (30% increase), every studio is set on retooling their slate, adapting to the craze.

We’ve seen what happens when a studio is cash strapped. They become more conservative, green lighting fewer movies with higher budgets that have a built in audience. Disney is making 8 movies next year, and are totally relying on already existing brands and franchises — a safe bet.

If the current model keeps up, and the studios become more conservative, when do you think we will see our first re-release of an older movie that came out in 2D, that got converted into 3D? It’s a sad thought because that doesn’t sound so far off.

Studios own libraries with thousands of movies, what’s stopping them from reaching into their library and converting Independence Day into 3D? What about Jurassic Park? They would spend no money on development, production, and they know it’s a popular movie. Besides the modest conversion costs into 3D, the only cost for the studio is the marketing, but how hard is that? The movie was already a proven hit.

All I know is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze in 3D! would be pretty awesome. I just might buy a ticket to that.

I hope no studio executives are reading this and have a lightbulb moment.

We wrote a post over a month ago about the Cantor Exchange, the Hollywood futures market created by Cantor Fitzgerald. They did a press release today and will be launching April 20th.

In my blog post, I talked about how the environment seemed like it’d be a hot bed for insider trading — marketing and distribution executives with access to tracking could go long/short on their film, or even re-allocate marketing dollars based on their trading positions and their rough knowledge of how the film will open.

They address this issue, but I don’t think the mechanisms in place will necessarily prevent the activity  (from Hollywood Reporter):

“distribution execs with access to early boxoffice data will be barred from making trades on the exchange after a film has opened.”

So distribution execs can’t invest AFTER a films release, but since movies post to the exchange 6 months before their release, and distribution execs have access to insider information well before a film’s opening, I don’t see how this completely solves the problem.

Anyway, kudos to Andy Wing and the guys over there for introducing such an innovative platform for us movie fans.

It’s no big surprise to hear that people are consuming content in a variety of new ways. For the movie fan, it’s great — itunes, netflix, redbox — it’s just getting easier to watch movies without going to the theater. But for those companies that always relied on traditional means of distribution, it’s more of a nightmare.

Over the last several decades, Hollywood has been propped up by home entertainment revenues, but now that the DVD business is in the gutter, these companies are scrambling to find a solution, or at least alter their approach to windowing the release of their movies.

Take for instance Disney. Bob Iger has announced his experimental plan to shorten the theatrical run of Alice in Wonderland from 16 weeks to 13 weeks so the movie is released on DVD and Blu Ray before summer time kicks in. Not as many people buy DVDs during the summer, so his idea is to shorten the window to bolster the home entertainment revenues that are often negatively impacted by the summer season. (Check out this Hollywood Reporter article for more).

Why would you ever shorten the release of a 3D visual spectacle like Alice in Wonderland, especially when Avatar had so much success late in it’s run? Like Avatar, this is a movie you must see in theaters to appreciate in full, so shaving three weeks off its theatrical release is like forgoing tens of millions of dollars. I can’t see how this experiment will pay off for Disney, but that’s besides the point — one of the major studios has made a declaration to change the once traditional releasing windows.

Bob Iger’s decision is revolutionary, but also full of controversy. The exhibitors are essentially being deprived of those extra three weeks of box office and concessions. It’s understandable why they’re upset, but what’s not being talked about as much is how talent is getting the shaft. Take for instance, Tim Burton. He worked his ass off to combine technologies and direct a visually stunning spectacle that can only be fully appreciated in IMAX and 3D.

It will be interesting to follow Iger’s decision, and how it will affect the relationship between talent and Disney in the future. It’s one thing to forgo star actors with first dollar gross, and concentrate your efforts on tent poles based upon known brands, but it’s another thing entirely to offend the star directors that make these tent poles possible.

Politics and egos aside, there’s been a lot of speculation and theorizing about digital distribution and releasing windows at this stage in the game, but this decision made by the media giant indicates a major shift in the media landscape.

Avatar, The Blindside, District 9, An Education, A Serious Man, Up, Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up In The Air — your 2010 Academy Award nominees for Best Picture. (Full list of nominations).

When the Academy Awards expanded it’s Best Picture nominations from 5 to 10, I’m not sure people anticipated that the extra slots would be reserved for movies like District 9, and Inglourious Basters.

Nothing against District 9, or Inglourious Basterds — I liked those movies way more than most of the nominated films — but do either of those films really have a chance at winning the the presitgious Best Picture Oscar? It seems like there was a conscious decision this year to nominate popular movies that don’t necessarily fit the mold. A couple thoughts:

1) Box Office — When a film is nominated for Best Picture, the Oscar buzz might persuade those who originally had little interest to buy a ticket so they can be in on the Academy conversations. By spending marketing dollars on their nominated film, and adding screens all around the country, a studio receives a nice box office push for their movie as they’re able to capitalize on the interest (check out this LA Times article for more). By nominating 10 films, as opposed to 5, you’ve given the public 5 more reasons to go the theaters and spend.

2) Viewership — Slowly over time, The Academy Awards became the ugly, boring sister to the Golden Globes, which is only increasing it’s viewer base. The Globes are a light hearted, pop culture driven award show. Audiences love that crap. It’s loose, it’s fun. Sure it’s not as prestigious, but that’s the point. By including films like District 9, Inglourious Basterds and even the Blind Side, the Academy is trying to add some flare to the program, and give the general viewing public more to talk about.

Up until recent years, the Oscars embraced their perception of high art and elitism, but as soon as people stopped watching because it was slow, boring and drawn out, they thought to mix it up a bit, and nominate movies like District 9 or Inglourious Basterds to expand their reach.

I’m wondering if the Academy honestly thinks that fan boys will be hosting awards parties, passing around hors devours of foie gras, eagerly awaiting Neil Blommkamp to accept Best Picture — no chance.

The Oscars are trying to harness the Globes’ populist message, but it’s totally contradictory to their voting process. You can’t be hip to the masses and elite at the same time. Choose one or the other. The fact that The Hangover (which was incredible) was even being considered at one point is kind of silly.

So, Oscar, I’ll leave you with this piece of advice: Stop trying to be so damn hip. Just accept yourself as the high brow awards show you’ve branded yourself as for decades.

This could be paranoia, but the dismal year-end performance of the video game industry, despite huge successes like Modern Warfare (it put up Avatar numbers), could lead to an ironic turn of events as video game creators also flock toward brands with pre-existing fan bases.

Because of the huge marketing expense that goes into promoting a new game concept, it would only make sense that the gaming industry would follow the emerging Hollywood mantra and 1) create sequels for existing popular games 2) create parallel storylines from the worlds of those popular games or 3) buy rights to IP with pre-awareness to be turned into games.

Here’s the rub…in the long run, both industries will be worse off because they both, ironically, will end up relying upon one another for the original content that can be developed to be released in their medium. So, two things would make sense, neither of which seem to be that awesome for us folks that want to watch, or play, cool new shit:

1) Studios that are on the front-end of committing to branded entertainment will buy up gaming companies — eg. Disney buys EA Sports

OR

2) Gaming companies with powerful parents or ambitious financial backers will start to develop non-gaming content to capture the full value of their stronger brands — eg. Ubisoft develops Assassin’s Creed the movie itself (I can’t really blame them…a bad Hollywood movie could hurt the gaming franchise, which is more valuable. That’s the reason why Halo fell apart)

Both seem to make sense. Sony would be a perfect example of a company who could stand to gain from the former as they have PlayStation 3 as an online platform to distribute their content (on top of their obvious marketing infrastructure).

My only hope is that Executives in both worlds continue to fight for the new ideas. After all, James Cameron only makes a movie once every 5-10 years, and while I’m pumped for Ghostbusters 3 (Ivan Reitman is directing?), us Gen-Y’ers deserve want a franchise we can call our own.

Am I the only one who’s looking forward to all these remakes? The negative connotation associated with a “remake” might have been applicable in the days of old: Studios had steady funding and a variety of tent-poles to rely on. They had sequels, experimental projects and even a steady stream of indies. Action stars like Van Damme and Schwarzenegger could repeat formulaic explosion yarns and still expect a decent audience turn out.  These bountiful times often meant the money and talent rarely got aimed at rehashed franchises from yester-year, superhero movies or geek fetish sci-fi flicks. Those guaranteed audiences of comic book readers, science fiction fanatics and classic sentimentalists were too small to consider seriously. The snobbish disdain these under-developed movies conjured was somewhat justified, as those of us who knew the source material languished the lost potential.

But that was the then! You need only visit the now massively popular comic-con to see that studios are foaming at the mouth to back any potential tent-pole with even the smallest semblance of pre-awareness. With the list of outside capital sources dwindling, no studio is willing to risk investing in original content with no established fan base. No funding is getting poured in for non tent-poles. And with the pre-recession successes of X-Men and Spiderman, comics have become amongst the most reliable source material. For some this might mark the decline of original film-making but, cynicism aside, it really just means that talented actors and directors will be shifted towards the “geek” medium that has always had a loyal fan base in the waiting. Instead of getting a rushed green light with C class talent, these old comic book and sci-fi epics are finally getting the care and attention they deserve from able visionaries and performers.

Of course, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. There will always be your simple minded GI Joes and Transformers. And there will be the occasional disappointments like Watchmen, which only offended the most elite of comic book snobs (myself included). But movies like Dark Knight, Star Trek, District 9 and Avatar show us that “geek” genre, when done properly, can entice a far broader audience.

Paramount is pushing comics, Sony has some old franchises like Ghostbusters to re-hash alongside another Spiderman sequel, Disney purchased Marvel and Fox owns the DC rights. Look at the line up of projects for the next couple of years, and the talent attached to them:

- Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins will be heading the cast of the Wolfman remake.
- Kenneth Brannagh will be directing Thor (2011), with Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman attached. Look forward to an engrossing plot, rich characters and awesome hammer wielding lighting battles.
- JJ Abrams’ Mystery Tentpole is slotted in between Star Trek 2 (2012) and Mission Impossible IV
- Bryan Synger will be directing X-Men: First Class, and producing Excalibur and Battlestar Galactica.
- Jon Favreau’s Iron-Man 2 with Robert Downey Jr. is looking more and more to be a promising sequel.
- Sam Worthington stars in the Epic Clash of the Titans revamp.
- Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland should offer a psychedelic experience in 3D.
- Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex will no doubt deliver a dour and stoic hero true to form.
- Tron’s remake looks incredible with Jeff Bridges taking on the roll of grim developer Flynn.
- Paramount is re-envisioning David Lynch’s Dune with Pierre Morel at the helm.
- The Hobbit, A-Team, Robin Hood, Karate Kid, are but a few of the many remakes in the works.
The list goes on…

There’s even a resurgence of quality originals in both superhero and sci-fi cinema: check out the trailers for Kick-Ass and Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

2009 is over, and with half of us losing our jobs and the other half getting the swine flu, we can collectively say good riddance, welcoming in the new decade. 2010 offers us a new era to indulge our geeky joy, and should the foolish executives begin to falter again…well there’s some pretty bad ass wolverine impersonators with home-made claws at the ready.

Jeff Katz – founder and CEO of American Original, Comic Book author, Producer, former Executive at New Line, ZDONK Board Member, etc, etc, etc — has launched the genre consumer’s response to The Huffington Post. GeekWeek is a one-stop shop for everything…well, geek.

The design is an amalgamation of Newsweek and the NY Post. It’s layout is simple and easy to navigate. He’s got writers from all the major Cinephile sites and geek blogs — JoBlo.com, IGN, amongst others — and seems to be the first aggregator that understands a seemingly basic fact…

The worlds of gaming, sports, wrestling, movies, comics, music, tech, etc have a huge crossover in their fan bases. If I knew how to draw a Venn Diagram using Wordpress (help would be much appreciated in the comments) the area where the many circles intersect would be huge. I’d be right smack in the middle.

Now I don’t have to go to wired for my tech news, bleedingcool for my comic news, joblo for my film news, profootballtalk for my football news — it’s all under one roof at Geekweek.com

If you’re a movie fan who loves football and wants to download a cheat code so they can beat their friends in Call of Duty on XBOX Live while talking about Chris Jericho’s performance in Smackdown, then you better check it out.

If anyone can pull it off, it’s Jeff Katz. He was probably doing all of that last night.

(Follow GeekWeek on Twitter)

Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment and Hulu have partnered to create and distribute the reality web show If I Can Dream. The show will air in America in 2010 on both Hulu.com and ificandream.com. (Check out this article on Mashable for more).

For as long as the site has existed, Hulu’s been known for streaming already seen on TV programming, but now the NBC Universal/News Corp. owned company ventures into creating and owning content. It was only a matter of time before the popular brand leverage their loyal user base to introduce their very own, Hulu made web show.

Crackle.com, Sony’s version of Hulu is pursuing a similar business model (creating content to distribute exclusively on their site first) and have already produced several web series, one starring Jon Heder called Woke Up Dead. Youtube has also made strides of their own, but the over saturation of user generated content makes it hard for consumers to trust Youtube as a brand that will produce quality programming. When I think of Youtube, I think of Quantity, not Quality.

Hulu having original, exclusive programming is different, but if you think about it, MTV’s evolution followed a similar path: They syndicated other people’s content (music videos), earned the trust of the consumer, then started creating their own content and original programming and are now a hugely successful brand that is somehow able to air season after season of consistently crappy shows.

Hulu and Simon Fuller (creator of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance) are two power house names that consumers trust. It will be interesting to see how the show does online, but the question still remains: How do you effectively monetize web content?

Advertising dollars might be able to cover the production cost of a reality show like If I can Dream, but it’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason a giant like Hulu would create and own content, is if they had big ideas in terms of generating revenue.

Hulu, in my opinion, is producing their own original web programming not to crack the code of generating relatively modest revenues online, but to use the community of loyal users as their focus group, trying to decipher which web shows should become TV shows. In other words, Hulu is an incubator, experimenting with various programming, feeling out what audiences are watching.

If it turns out If I Can Dream is immensely popular, don’t be surprised if we’re seeing it on TV in the near future. (On a personal level — this show looks awful, but who knows). Below is the sizzle real to introduce the upcoming freak show.

The LA Times published an article today about the new division Paramount Studios has created to develop and produce roughly 20 films per year with budgets under 100k. The studio hasn’t thought of a name yet, but let’s just call it “Holy Shit, Let’s Find The Next Paranormal Activity” division.

The studio has allocated $1 million of their annual production capital to finance these super low budget movies, and will staff one of their current executives to head up the initiative.

It’s certainly an interesting development for the current studio landscape that’s shifting all their capital and resources toward producing big budget tent poles and re-boots. For Paramount, they’re spending $1 million to hopefully stumble upon the next Paranormal Activity, but even if they don’t strike gold again, they’ll have lots of genre-specific content to pump into their extensive distribution network.

Even in this time of studio consolidation and risk aversion, I think spending only $1 million to finance up to 20 films is justified, especially because they plan to release these films in college towns and mid night screenings, similar to the release of Paranormal Activity. Essentially, Paramount will know if they have a hit on their hands before they dump millions of dollars into marketing.

The real question is, can a studio make a movie for under 100k? The studio system is renown for overspending on development, talent, production — just about everything. But with little cash flow left, Paramount has decided to try their hand in super low budget filmmaking.

The reason Paranormal Activity worked so well was because it was made outside the studio system. Same thing goes for District 9. For some reason or another, studios have a hard time understanding guerilla filmmaking, but it’s about time one of the majors at least tried.