OPEN WIDE.(summer movie marketing)

In August, 1975, the critic Stephen Farber, writing in the Times, attributed the success of "Jaws"--which in just two months had become one of the most popular films in history--to an "aggressive media blitz" that had "pummeled" moviegoers into submission and into theatres. While Hollywood had traditionally "platformed" its movies, starting them out in a few theatres and then gradually adding more in the course of weeks or months, "Jaws" opened on more than four hundred screens across the country, a wider release than any previous film had had. There was also a nationwide prime-time television ad campaign--one of the biggest ever for a movie. The upshot, Farber suggested, was that moviegoers were manipulated into seeing the film. "Audiences who think they made 'Jaws' a success are pitifully naive about the mass media," he wrote.

This was exactly what Hollywood wanted to believe, since it meant that there might be a formula for building a blockbuster. If you gave a movie a big enough push out of the gate, its momentum would keep it going. You could start what economists call a "non-informative information cascade," where people would go to the movie simply because everyone else was going. Take a high concept, add a hefty marketing budget and a wide release, and you have yourself a hit. Two decades later, the "Jaws" formula rules. Nearly every weekend this summer has brought a blockbuster opening supported by tens of millions of dollars in ad spending. Now the big Hollywood movies--"Spider-Man,"?"X2: X-Men United,"?"The Matrix: Reloaded"--open on more than seven thousand screens.

And yet hits like "Jaws" are no easier to come by. More often, would-be blockbusters perform as they have this summer: they open big but get small fast. "The Matrix: Reloaded" took in $91.7 million in its opening weekend, but two weekends later made just $15.6 million. "X2" earned $85.6 million in its first weekend but less than half that a week later. And "The Hulk" saw its box-office plummet seventy per cent in its second weekend. In 1993, the top ten movies earned around half of their total revenue in their first three weeks. These days, the top ten earn three-quarters of their revenue in that time. Movies disappear faster, too. "The Hulk" opened in almost four thousand theatres. After five weeks, it was playing in fewer than six hundred. Think of this as platforming in reverse.

Does that mean that the "Jaws" formula no longer applies? Actually, it never did. "Jaws" may have opened big because Universal marketed it well and released it widely, but it stayed big because people liked it. And controlling what people like is something that even the most clever marketer can't do. For all the money and energy that studio executives invest in trying to build blockbusters, William Goldman's famous Hollywood precept--"Nobody knows anything"--still holds true. A few years ago, the ...