Amplify’d from www.filmcritic.com
Which begs this question: what is the core audience of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? Well,
when I saw it this weekend, the members of the audience were mostly
under 30 and (visually) equally distributed between stereotypical nerds
and stereotypical hipsters. There were enough snarky T-shirts and chunky
black-frame glasses to fill a coffee shop next to an Apple store.
But
only enough of them to fill that one coffee shop -- and this is the
problem, commercially speaking. Nerds and hipsters love what they love,
and, while they love it, they love it with the white-hot intensity of a
thousand obsessive-compulsive suns (and when they stop loving it, they
hate you for still loving it -- but that's another column entirely). But
hipsters and nerds -- and the occasional hipster nerds -- aren't in
themselves a big enough audience to move the box-office needle any
appreciable distance.
In fact, I strongly believe that
nerd-hipster love has a more-or-less quantifiable value for films: $10
million dollars on opening weekend, or, as it happens, just about
exactly what Scott Pilgrim made last weekend.
Bear in mind that none of this has to do with the quality of these films. I'm quite fond of Serenity and Stardust and had a ton of fun watching Scott Pilgrim and would heartily
encourage you to see it if you haven't. Nor is the point here that
having the Comic-Con crowd love your film means you have the commercial
kiss of death hanging about your neck. Heck, The Expendables was trotted
out at Comic-Con, and it did fine, obviously. But if all you have is
the Comic-Con crowd and/or the Internet loving your film, you may be
screwed. Commercially speaking, there's not enough there there.
More
to the point, if I were a movie director and my marketing people
were telling me their big plan was to generate a huge wave of publicity
with Internet tastemakers and the Comic-Con crowd and ride that wave
right into the opening weekend, I'd get on the phone to my agent and
grab the next directing gig I could, before the wipeout of my $10
million opening.
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