The Razzies

This past weekend marked the thirty-second year of The Golden Raspberry Awards also known as The Razzies. The Razzies are a faux award show honoring the worst in film and cinema. For the first time in history one movie has swept the Razzies, winning every award of the night. That movie is Adam Sandler’s Jack And Jill. Adam Sandler also acquired a new record of being the first person to win both the worst male and female role in a film. Rounding out the winnings was Al Pacino winning worst supporting actor, playing himself. Adam Sandler being a co-writer received the award for worst screenplay. Of course the movie also took top honors of the night receiving the award for worst movie of the year.

The reason why Jack And Jill is such an extraordinary movie is due to its reception. Despite the fact that according to The Razzies was the worst film of the year, it did extremely well in theaters. Jack And Jill raked in 74.2 million dollars beating out The Artist which only received 43 million; one small difference is that The artist won 5 Oscars.

Here is a list of some other movies earnings this same year.

Jack And Jill- $74,158,157

The Artist- $43,037,870

The Ides of March- $40,962,534

50/50- $39,187,783

Drive- $35,054,909

It seems that audiences are growing more stagnant with their movie decisions. The common audience wants to see something that they know they are going to like, in this case an Adam Sandler comedy. Audiences are much less willing to invest their ten dollar admission on a movie they are not too sure if they will like. Due to audiences wanting more of the same Hollywood producers will make more of the same movies just to turn around a quick buck instead of striving for something new like 50/50 or Drive.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/adam-sandler-razzies-record-sweep_n_1395609.html

Viral

Movies today need something more than just a good storyline to make it in the industry. There is such a big market for movies that they must do something in order to stand out. Some movies decide to come out with viral campaigns in order to boost awareness of their movie. In today’s age of internet and computers a viral campaign is a great way to get the masses excited about a film. The first movie to come out with an elaborate viral campaign was Cloverfield. They decided to create websites and myspace pages for the companies and the main characters of the film. They updated the websites and the myspace pages the day leading up to the movie/monster attack. This type of marketing proved extremely effective. I for one went to go see the movie mainly because of the viral campaign.

The new Spiderman movie coming out decided to use a viral campaign as well. In six cities in the U.S. they scattered backpacks at certain coordinates at certain times. A handful of people discovered these backpacks, turns out they belonged to the films antagonist Peter Parker. The backpacks contained physics texts books, photography gear, and clues to the next event in the viral campaign. The clues turned to a website which revealed new coordinates at a predestined time. People raced to the next clue. It turns out it was people dressed in a Spiderman sweatshirt instructing people to graffiti a stencil of Spiderman’s logo. (All of this graffiti was done legally.) The contestants were then sent home with a Spiderman sweatshirt and a great experience. As of right now no one knows if they will continue with the viral campaign, but with a movie that does not come out for at least six months I can guarantee you that we will see more of this campaign and more like it.

Viral campaigns are a great way to get fans excited in future films. It seems that more and more films are involving their fans with viral campaigns.