While word of mouth could always make or break a movie, it usually took days to affect the box office. But the rise of social networking tools like Twitter may be narrowing that time frame to mere hours. And that has Hollywood on edge.
This summer, movies such as "Bruno" and "G.I. Joe" have had unexpected tumbles at the box office - just within their opening weekends - while "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" survived blistering critical reaction to become a blockbuster.
Box-office watchers say the dramatic swings may be caused by Twitter and other social networking sites that can blast instant raves - or pans - to hundreds of people just minutes after the credits roll.
"Almost every time after I go out [to a movie], I'll tweet about it," says Lindsay Wailes, a cook and barista from Westminster. "I tweeted about 'G.I. Joe' as soon as I left the theater." Her take on the movie: "If you like science or plot, this isn't a movie for you; if you like explosions for no reason, you'll love it."
She also listens to what others have to say: She turned her back on the shock comedy "Bruno" because of downbeat Twitter reviews. "A lot of my friends are crazy young people - I'd expect them to like 'Bruno' more than an actual critic, and even they said, 'It's crass, don't see it.' So I didn't bother."
Studios are trying to gauge the impact of an avalanche of tweets, and how it affects the staying power of a movie. Was the 39 percent box office drop of "Bruno" from Friday to Saturday a case of disappointed moviegoers tweeting from theater lobbies? Or did a limited fan base for "Bruno" exhaust itself on that first day?
"I think Twitter can't be stopped," says Stephen Bruno, the Weinstein Co.'s senior director of marketing. He's trying to stay ahead of an audience's appetite for instant information.
"Now you have to see it as an addition to the campaign of any movie," he says. "People want real-time news and suddenly a studio can give it to them in a first-person way. The blogs have to go to our feeds for the latest trailers and reports."
Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, says studios are worrying about a time when "people will be twittering during the opening credits - and leaving when they don't like them." But he also warns, "the next step [for the Twitter Effect] is for studio marketing to manipulate it."
The Weinstein Co. has already done that big-time for the Friday release of the Quentin Tarantino-Brad Pitt World War II epic "Inglourious Basterds."
