The Twitter Effect on Box Office Sales

The Twitter Effect

The Twitter Effect on Box Office Sales

There is a growing belief in Hollywood that Twitter is becoming an increasingly important component for generating box office revenues. This “Twitter effect” either contributes to a movie’s opening weekend numbers success or decreases revenues on Saturday and Sunday based on the 140 character reviews coming out from viewers on Fridays. Examples of this include the boost given to District 9 and the deflated box office stats for Bruno.

Now Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog declares the movie Inglorious Basterds to be the first true success story of the “Twitter Age” with weekend box office results of $37.6 million in ticket sales. What was Risky Biz’s rationale?

“The initial fear for “Basterds” was that filmgoers expecting a pure action movie — the movie that the Weinsteins marketed — would be disappointed and give it a thumbs-down once the pic unspooled.

That would ding the film as it played throughout the weekend — especially as the more generous Tarantino fans who rushed out to see the movie Friday gave way to more general audiences over the weekend.

But the movie actually held its ground and even picked up steam as the weekend went on, as even Saturday twitterers enthusiastically tweeted and re-tweeted their approval …

For those with doubts about the trend, take a look at the additional evidence showing that a majority, 78% of the tweets about Inglourious Basterds were approving in nature. Analytics provider Crimson Hexagon analyzed Twitter conversation over the weekend of August 21st to the 23rd and found that Tweets were seperated into 8 different categories based on content: Loved It, Pitt was Great, Vintage Tarantino, Not Tarantino’s Best, Unimpressed, Have to See it, Should I see it?, and What did you think? The results:

The combination of the positive and anticipatory tweets (Loved It, Pitt was Great, Have to see it, and Vintage Tarantino) resulted in a 78% approval of the movie. Combining negative tweets (Not Tarantino’s Best, Unimpressed) led to a measly 8%.

With that kind of data, it’s hard not to believe that the overwhelmingly positive response from the Twittersphere convinced at least some movie goers to check out Basterds.