Hollywood Continues to Crash and Burn by Resorting to Focus Groups
Studios are assembling superfan focus groups to assess various materials for a franchise project to avoid social media backlash.
“They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate’ … If it’s early enough & the movie isn’t finished yet, we can make those kinds… pic.twitter.com/UlSws3kLE0
- DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 3, 2024
- In a franchise economy increasingly dependent upon established audience devotion to drive the bottom line, the threat of toxic fandoms poisoning that enthusiasm has become a seemingly intractable headache for almost every studio. And it’s only getting worse. “It comes with the territory, but it’s gotten incredibly loud in the last couple years,” says a veteran marketing executive at a major studio.
- “People are just out for blood, regardless. They think the purity of the first version will never be replaced, or you’ve done something to upset the canon of a beloved franchise, and they’re going to take you down for doing so.”In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project.
- “They’re very vocal,” says the studio exec. “They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.’” These groups have even led studios to alter the projects: “If it’s early enough and the movie isn’t finished yet, we can make those kinds of changes.
- ”Several studio insiders say they often put their talent through a social media boot camp; in some cases, when a character is intentionally challenging a franchise’s status quo, studios will, with the actor’s permission, take over their social media accounts entirely. When things get really bad - especially involving threats of violence - security firms will scrub talent information from the internet to protect them from doxxing.
SRC