One of Hollywood’s top executives is blaming the use of SMS messaging for unexpectedly low box office takings. Apparently viewers are texting their friends to let them know just how bad the latest blockbusters actually are.
“In the old days, there used to be a term, ‘buying your gross,’ ” Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. “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 movie-goers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money.
More at http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=434778.
Now I’m no movie executive but I’m happy to give some free advice to Hollywood. Maybe they should consider making some better movies so people don’t have to warn their friends to keep away…?
Or perhaps they will take the lead from the record industry and try to have the use of SMS banned.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 at 16:09 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.