The media is noticing a new studio trend in 2006, which is simply not showing crappy movies to critics, and letting your marketing speak for itself. Hey, if you think your film is critic-proof, and you know you're going to make the bulk of your money on opening weekend (before word-of-mouth spreads), then you really have no use for bad reviews of your film to hit on Friday morning.
"We are not going to spend $50,000 for the privilege of negative reviews for a film that isn't going to be affected by them," Tom Ortenberg, president of Madea distributor Lionsgate.
The New York Post writes that 8 films already this year have been held back from critics, while there were only 7 instances of this all last year. It's also certainly not going unnoticed that 4 of those films (Hostel, Underworld: Evolution, When a Stranger Calls, and now Madea's Family Reunion) all opened at #1.
Seriously? People are paying money to see those? Amazing.
Posted by: Chris | March 05, 2006 at 12:39 AM