Paranormal Activity, the super-low-budget movie that's actually been
lying around for two years, gets a high rise in profits and it has The
Blair Witch Project to thank. And when I say "super-low-budget", I'm
mean embarrassingly low. Blair Witch was around $20,000, but Paranormal
Activity managed to record over that figure with $15,000, which results
as a slap to the face (or forehead) of Hollywood movie marketers.
Another major difference is that Blair Witch attempted to sell itself
as a documentary which is actually wasn't at all and this angered the
audience quite a bit before they even saw it. Paranormal Activity on the
other hand is relying much more on the reaction of the audience to
market itself. Before understanding how this is being done, here's a
little background.
The horror flick directed by Oren Peli, an up and coming San Diego
filmmaker, began garnering attention to the extent of what some are
calling a cult following about a year ago after giving the film a
screening at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival. Who else but Steven
Spielberg of all people was originally interested in directing a re-make
of the film with a much larger budget (the blockbuster director
obviously hasn't gotten enough out of paranormal movie making). He
intended to put the original cut into the DVD release as a DVD extra,
but then carried the film over to Paramount/DreamWorks where it's
subsequently taken off as is.
The grassroots-marketing use of the Paranormal Activity movie's web
page is what is allowing the film to be brought to select theaters,
literally by the audience requesting (or "demanding" as the website
says) it to their local theater by pressing a button, and the movie has
Josh Greenstein and Megan Colligan of Eventful to thank. Eventful
provides "a user-generated entertainment booking site of sorts, for a
campaign that goes far outside the traditional route."[1] Paramount then
uses the info collected from the website to decide where to market the
movie through radio and T.V. with the Paranormal Activity movie trailer,
which barely shows much from the film and more of the reactions from
the audience at Hollywood viewings.
The method is being talked of as an "experiential sell" by Greenstein
and is certainly doing quite a job of it, especially after watching the
tweet counter on twitter go up to 870 from 25 over a half-hour and from
5:00 to 5:30 ON A MONDAY MORNING. What's more is that, thus far, the
strategy is quite a success. Over the weekend of October 2nd, 2009 the
movie was shown exclusively at 12 theaters in the U.S. at midnight only
and grossed $500,000. That's a 3,333% profit so far. It should be
interesting to see what happens now that Paramount has released it to
170 theaters at regular viewing times, though not surprising in the
least as it displays the cliche reaction of a giant corporation when
dealing with an independent work of art. It seems that this move would
kill the whole concept that Eventful has going, that's made such a huge
return, wouldn't it?
Regardless, while Eventful has previously worked with the tour
scheduling of comedians and musicians, Paranormal Activity has scratched
a new notch in Eventful's history, setting a record for film after
their original projection for demands was 100,000 and ended up
surpassing that in a matter of days.
