Huge revenue from DVD in the cards? That isn’t a consolation prize - that’s a real win (and perhaps a miracle for a film as poorly conceived as this one.) With a reported cost of only $35 million, this will be an okay performer for a studio that has struggled since the last of the Lord of the Rings films. Industry observers like John Hamann of Box Office Prophets seem on the cusp of understanding this, even as they question the film’s “disappointing numbers.” A quote from Hamann: Snakes won’t change anything, but it could start a decent-sized franchise for New Line, with huge revenue from DVD in the cards. Online fan communities gave this movie’s creators a remarkable opportunity to turn a zero into something more. Critics, not primed to think of the movie as camp, might have panned the hell out of it. What they don’t seem to realize is that this movie could very well have been a disaster. Snakes on a Plane opened at $15.3M, making it number one for the week but drawing criticism from most observers, who called the numbers “disappointing” even as a very healthy number of film critics (and even more consumers) hailed the movie as great camp fun. Many people - including Henry Jenkins, who noticed this phenomenon long before most and has written about it extensively - have argued that Snakes on a Plane represents a great example of how fan communities can be incorporated into the development as well as marketing process, especially for the purpose of creating a “Long Tail” hit that is profitable without a giant budget. Jackson’s key line (“I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane”) was reportedly inserted into the film only after bloggers made it up and spread it around. Makers of the movie (including Jackson) were probably not initially intending to create a camp hit, but when they realized what was happening, they did something relatively unusual in Hollywood: they adapted their marketing efforts (and even the movie itself) to conform to the camp expectations of the blogosphere.įor example: Samuel L. Jackson, in a story so silly that as soon as bloggers got wind of it, they began gleefully making parodies and hailing the movie as the upcoming camp hit of the year. There are lessons here for the game industry.Ī brief recap, for those of you who aren’t familiar with this. I’m talking about the debut of Snakes on a Plane, the movie that bloggers (and a few media scholars) love to talk about, and cynics love to trash. Xbox 360” - partisans in that fight won’t rest anytime soon. A big debate has been brewing for months now, and this weekend marked the event that will finally blow the lid off that debate.
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