Monday, April 25, 2011

Hollywood baffled by success of "Atlas Shrugged"

According to the film moguls (as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times), the film had an "awful" marketing plan. However, it is expanding its showings from the original 299 theatres to more than 1,000 by the end of April. The $5,640 per theatre take on opening weekend is described by the Sun-Times as "hefty."

It seems that what the producers did was to look for people that would like the movie, so they targeted their marketing to people like us -- Tea Partiers, Libertarians, and Ayn Rand enthusiasts. Outside of Hollywood, I believe this is known as "niche" marketing.

I suspect that what baffles them even more is how a movie can succeed that is so contrary to their basic values. John 8:32 all over again.

And those "Rearden metal bracelets" are selling so well at $159 a pop -- worldwide -- that they are back-ordered until May 9.

3 comments:

Tracy said...

Down 48% from last weekend, and under $2K per screen this past weekend.

If this is success, I'd hate to see what failure looks like.

Anonymous said...

Kinda like Hank Reardon--shot it's wad on Friday night, been limp ever since.

Anonymous said...

The slow roll-out model can't lose 2/3 of its per-screen take on the second weekend and be called a success. That's very bad. A film shouldn't be drawing those kind of numbers until it's on it's way out, not at the early stages of the ramp-up.