The director of one of this summer's most popular movies says the rise of such social networking sites as Twitter and Facebook will put more pressure on filmmakers to deliver the goods.
The days when eight people would gather around the office water cooler on a Monday morning and praise or pan a movie they saw Friday night are being overtaken by tweets and Facebook postings, says Todd Phillips.
“In the old days, it used to be the water cooler effect,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “Now people get on their thing Friday night when they leave and talk to 8,000 people.”
Warner Bros. Pictures says Phillips' buddy comedy The Hangover has become the top-grossing R-rated comedy of all time since its release last month, surpassing Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop from the mid-1980s.
Phillips, who says a sequel to The Hangover is in the works, grins widely when asked how he feels about toppling the iconic Murphy flick.
“I feel bad,” he says with a chuckle.
“The enthusiasm that The Hangover has been met with around the world – I mean, it's up to like $325 million at the box office – is absurd and nothing we ever really expected.”
“It's totally thrilling.”
Distributors crank up the hype machine when a movie is released. Internet postings seem to allow consumers to cut through the bluster a lot faster than before.
“I think the Internet has affected it more than people like to admit,” Phillips said.
“Believe it or not, I do think what we're going to see in the next few years is movies (will) have to deliver on what their marketing is putting out there.”
He said the effects are already being seen this summer as some highly touted movies have quickly fizzled. While he didn't provide any specific titles, Sacha Baron Cohen's highly anticipated comedy Bruno has performed below expectations at the box office, which some observers blame on the so-called “Twitter effect.”
Phillips says he believes one of the reasons The Hangover worked is because it lived up to its marketing.
“Whether you liked the movie or not, you looked at the trailers and the commercials and we delivered the movie.”
