Hollywood Continues to Crash and Burn by Resorting to Focus Groups

[lovelylaura23]

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

Comments

[sandstorm]

"fans are just so vitriolic, let's have a focus group of them to tell us what to do so people don't yell at us."

SOMEtimes I think that can work, like god knows NATLA needed fans to help them with the characterization points. I do agree that fans need to know how to act, if you have a focus group for Rings of Power, the majority of those fans will be like "WHY IS IT WOKE GET RID OF THE BLACK PEOPLE", and why would you want to listen to that? Why would you want to make THOSE people happy?

Criticizing a show =/= @ing showrunners or actors with death threats, which is not acceptable.

[jontargaryen]

Tolkien fans are the one fanbase that scares me. Do you know how racist you have to be to think Rings of Power is "too diverse"??

[steffi_333]

The Witcher fans are similar, it’s gross

[kjesta]

i'm a lifelong tolkien fan bc those books were read to me as a child, but interestingly i never interacted with The Fandom TM until ROP was on the horizon. it genuinely made me distraught how high the ratio of pure racist and mysoginist assholery is in that space. there's lovely, thoughtful people there, but i had to pull back from most of the online spaces discussing the show bc something abt it is making people SO unhinged that i find it frightening. like, what kind of human being is it that reacts like THIS to a show that is, at worst, a mediocre adaptation if you dislike it?

[squirrels_oh_no]

Netflix does this for sure - they have a small group of users who get invited occasionally to watch unreleased stuff and do a survey and maybe do a zoom focus group.

[moonisaballoon]

I need the names of whoever was consulted to cancel “Glow”, so I can kill them with my bare hands

[squirrels_oh_no]

I don't think they got a focus group from that, I think that was some executive - probably a dude with two ex-wives who whines about child support and alimony payments and drives a Maserati and doesn't watch TV/movies because he thinks it's "juvenile" and instead parties with 20 somethings 5 nights a week (and has the kids the other two).

[moonisaballoon]

The way that this doesn’t even need to be fact-checked

[flyingpigs_live]

Fanservice ruins everything. Hollywood deserves it though (not the below the line workers, the executives and studios and even the millionaire creators).

[jontargaryen]

I need to know how these focus groups are chosen and contacted. Is it like the Taylor Swift secret sessions where she would have her team DM random fans and invite them under this cloak of secrecy?

When it comes to Disney in particular, they have catered to these people, done nothing to support actors, and intentionally thrown Nia DaCosta under the bus after The Marvels bombed. Yes, these fans are vile, but I see the creatives, not the company, as the victims in this.

[silverstarry]

I did a focus group for a tv show back in ye olden days. A friend and her roommate were going to one, and my friend said that the focus group people told her they still needed more people so she brought me along. I was not vetted at all for anything beforehand. I just showed up. While I understand why focus groups seek out specific demographics (especially when they're trying to get reactions from a diverse group of people), the group I was in was a complete hodgepodge, and in a sense I can see the value in just taking a bunch of randos off the street, showing them a tv show, and asking what they think.

In theory, I understand using fans to be a focus group because there have been times when I was a fan of a show and the continuity errors were obvious, glaring, and annoying. Even small things that don't really affect the plot like changing a character's birthday can be really noticeable to fans who actually pay attention (as opposed to casual viewers who wouldn't notice or care).

But I am not here for fans raging because they want a

[my_moloko]

How was the show and did it ever make it to air?

[silverstarry]

Thankfully, the pilot I watched never aired because it was TERRIBLE. It was supposed to become a network sitcom but it had all the production value of a Nickelodeon show, and not in a fun Double Dare kind of way. The writing was terrible too. The only detail I remember is that John Schneider (from The Dukes of Hazzard) was in it.

[genbu_no_miko24]

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