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Why Snakes on a Plane Only Flew So Far

Written on
August 23rd 2006
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by Kenneth Musante  |
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Despite the online hype, the movie Snakes on a Plane only brought in about $15 million in its opening this weekend. It was a far cry from the studio’s anticipated cash intake, which was in the $20 million range. Back in June, I wrote about how great the publicity behind Snakes on a Plane was.

Snakes got a lot of play in the blogosphere in regards to its name and the fact that it starred Samuel L. Jackson. Folks online loved the title, which pretty much sums up the movie, and the studio saw fit to incorporate a lot of ideas from fans, including movies, fans, and the line of dialogue ” motherf—— snakes on a motherf—— plane.” But while I still think that the kind of viral PR Snakes got before its release produces a lot of bang for the buck, the uninspiring box office results showed that there may have been too much of a reliance on online hype.

In an interview with Reuters, Brandon Gray of BoxOfficeMojo.com attributed Snakes on a Plane’s poor box office sales to the title. He said it was too straightforward and gave away too much about the movie. Catharine P. Taylor of AdFreak added that it may have been simply because people get creeped out by snakes. I think there are two main reasong, both more related to the limited reach of this kind of online marketing and the studio’s over-reliance on it than on any problem inherent in the film (which was full of cheese, BTW).

The Clustered Blogosphere
One problem with the kind of viral promotion that Snakes got was that hype for the movie only reached people who are in a small corner of the blogosphere. The blogosphere is not one great democratic community that some people seem to think it is. I’ve noticed that bloggers tend to congregate in groups around different interests. Before the movie was released, a blogger plugged in to a group that’s throwing out a lot of links and such about Snakes on a Plane would have gotten an earful about how great the movie would be, and how cool it would be to hear Samuel L. drop the f-bomb.

A New Line marketing person who went online to see what people on the Internet are saying about the movie would probably have done a Google search for “Snakes on a Plane” and gotten a whole list of blogs and websites that all link to each other, showing a healthy and growing online conversation. Or that marketing person might have been a part of a movie community where people were already talking about Snakes on a Plane. Either way, the mistaken impression would be that the movie is getting a lot of publicity from a lot of different people. In reality, the movie was only getting a lot of publicity among a lot of the same people. All the hype stayed within the same sphere.

The Coasts vs. the Midwest
I also wouldn’t be surprised to find that most of the people who bought a ticket for Snakes on a Plane on opening weekend were located in urban areas on the East or West coasts (NY/LA). People living in the non-urban regions in the middle United States have a distinctly different culture when it comes to the Internet than those who live in urban areas like New York or LA. (They are also not targeted nearly as much by advertisers and marketers.) Life is slower and more easygoing in the greater U.S. than in the cities.

Most of the people I know in the Midwest treat the Internet as a tool to gather information and buy things, rather than as an integrated component of their lives. They’re also generally not as savvy about all the new tech buzz words and technologies like blogging, podcasting, social networks and the nebulous “Web 2.0″. The cities have a lot of people in them, but not nearly as much as the rest of the U.S. combined. Folks I know in the Midwest never even heard of Snakes on a Plane until opening weekend. By then of course, they’ve missed all the hype, and Snakes becomes just another one of those mediocre Hollywood movies.

Movies are a mass-market commodity, which means that any promotion for them has to reach the target cheesy R-rated horror/disaster flick demographic (18-34 year old males) across the whole market spectrum. When you miss a large chunk, like those who don’t roll in certain blogging spheres, or those who don’t live in urban areas, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that the large amount of hype we all saw on the surface for Snakes had little effect on the actual box office numbers.



Reader Comments.

KENNETH MUSANTE’S ARTICLE CONCERNING THE
MOVIE “SNAKES ON A PLANE” MISSED ONE VERY
IMPORTANT CONCLUSION ON IT’S POOR SHOWING
AT THE BOX OFFICE. TIMING…..DO YOU THINK
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REALLY NEED OR WANT TO
SEE A MOVIE OF THIS CALIBER,AFTER SURVIVING
A PLOT TO TAKE DOWN MULTIPLE COMMERCIAL
PASSENGER JETS. DO WE NEED FICTIONAL TERROR
WHEN WE LIVE WITH IT EVERY DAY IN THE REALITY
OF TODAY’S WORLD. THE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD
NEEDS TO WAKE UP, AND REALIZE THAT THE INTEGRITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IS NOT
WITHOUT SOUL.

Posted by John Perkovich | 12:59 pm on August 23, 2006.

Is it possible that the online marketing campaign helped an otherwise would-be Hollywood box office failure?

Let’s face it, it was a bad weekend for movies, period. Who release a movie in mid-Aug? and it was rated R, which limits your overall audience. At the end of the day, SNAKES still finished #1 for that weekend.

When the outcome doesn’t live up to the hype, people look for things to blame- and in this instance, critics have chosen to hightlight the marketing strategy since it is an obvious differentiator.

The assumptions that the disappointing box office numbers are attributed to the marketing strategy i think is unfair. Newline did some really creative stuff and i believe could’ve possibly lifted the numbers that, perhaps, would’ve been even more disappointing.

I believe marketing did their part here (altho the part of the article about missing middle america is valid). for the full picture, we should examine the whole picture.

Besides, when was the last time, marketing actually saved a bad film?

Posted by Daniel | 2:42 pm on August 23, 2006.

Sure, SOAP’s underwhelming performance can likely be attributed to the transparency of its title. We’ve all watched countless movie trailers that essentially amount to the entire film’s worth. Who hasn’t turned to whomever they’re with and said, “Well, we don’t have to see that now.”

Snakes on a Plane just tipped its hand too early. Why drop ten bucks to see it if you get it as soon as you hear the motherf—ing title?

Kudos to Snakes on a Plane for being able to mine beneath the Lowest Common Denominator. The opportunity cost is only five million bucks.

Posted by jf | 5:01 pm on August 23, 2006.

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