Oscar winners are becoming less successful at the box office. In other words, a growing gap between what critics rate and what audiences want to watch. Reminiscent of advertising?
TV, Film & Gaming
It was unlike any other sitcom before or since: largely shot in the first person and voiced by an inner monologue. The creators nicked this idea from something completely different – a documentary about the model Caprice Bourret called Being Caprice.
In 1994, an American health organisation caused popcorn sales to plummet by 50%. A study had shown that a medium bag of popcorn contained 37 grams of saturated fat, so the organisation turned this abstract number into a terrifying reality: the same amount of fat as six Big Macs.
After the Queen’s Gambit began ruling the Netflix charts in late 2020, Chess.com saw a 400% rise in registrations, while US sales of chess sets on eBay soared by 60%.
The celebrated director makes his movies with an audience in mind, but that audience isn’t a big group: “It’s me – I am the audience. I am the guy who pays $8 to go and see a movie, and I’m betting there are other people like me out there.”
A clever bit of editing can turn the trailer for Harry Potter 6 – arguably the darkest film in the franchise – into a classic teen comedy. It’s surprising how well it fits, and it’s worth checking out other re-cut trailers (e.g. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a horror).
The most successful sitcom of the 90’s was a product of pet peeves. As Jerry Seinfeld explains, “it’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?”” As viewers of the show will know, what makes it special is the relatability of the characters’ problems.
In the film Sicario, Josh Brolin’s character pauses and looks away before he reveals the big plot twist: the FBI is trying to create single Colombian-run business that the US can more easily control. But the pause only came about because Josh Brolin forgot his lines.
The Sidemen channel recently released an eight part ‘Big Brother’ style YouTube series, which gained over 10 million views (more than the 2024 Prime Minister debate and Love Island combined). TV in disguise.
The Oscar-winning film Sideways did more for Pinot Noir than any wine seller could have dreamed of. The film’s hero, a schoolmaster and wine snob played by Paul Giamatti, loathes merlot and loves pinot noir, its less favoured rival. In the weeks after the film opened Sainsbury’s reported a 20% surge in pinot sales, while across the US sales increased by 16%.
The epic power of Squid Game. The hit Netflix show increased:
– Vans sales by 7,800%
– Korean signups on Duolingo by 76%
– Korean candy on show up 250%
According to the most commercially successful director of all time, “I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.”
Rocket launches are synonymous with countdowns (T minus), but this wasn’t a scientific invention. Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang invented the countdown in his 1929 silent film Woman in the Moon, as a way of building suspense for the fictional launch. NASA adopted it as common practice decades later.
In one of the film’s most iconic scenes, Don Corleone scolds a man for visiting him on the day of his daughter’s wedding – while petting a cat. Was the cat a metaphor for Vito’s cunning nature, or perhaps his soft and calm exterior that bellies his brutal acts? Neither. According to director Francis Ford Coppola, “the cat was not planned for, I saw the cat running around the studio, and took it and put it in his hands without a word.”
Don Corleone is most famous for it, but he didn’t create it. The quote goes back to Honoré de Balzac’s 1835 novel Le Père Goriot, in which the character Vautrin tells Eugene: “In that case I will make you an offer that no one would decline.” It just goes to show that creativity can be found in seemingly irrelevant places.