Scott Pilgrim Vs The Box Office
It?s been interesting reading the variety of postmortems being written about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, which despite a massive marketing blitz only recouped $10 million at the box office in its opening weekend. The gist is that the movie?s fanbase and the word-of-mouth they generated for the movie, which was substantial, couldn?t outdo the allure of The Expendables, which promised men lots of good old-fashioned explosions with a collection of action stars from the last 30 years, or Eat, Pray, Love, which promised women a travelogue of a woman who?s just searching for a way out of the craziness of daily life and maybe a love interest or three along the way to finding herself.
Was Scott Pilgrim hard to describe, as many of these write-ups have claimed? Yeah, to some extent. ?20-something slacker who?s in a band tries to woo the girl of his dreams but has to fight her evil exes in a video-game like environment.?
So it?s not that the marketing campaign didn?t connect with the core audience. And it?s not that the campaign wasn?t big enough. While it might not be on the scale of Iron Man 2 it certainly wasn?t hiding. The press and publicity activities alone were enough to get the movie on the radar of anyone who wasn?t in complete media lock-down. I?d also argue that it?s not that Michael Cera isn?t a big enough movie star for a couple reasons, primarily that we?ve been told for a couple years now that stars don?t matter.
Instead it?s more likely that most all of this movie?s audience was at Comic-Con.
Not literally, of course, but what we have here is another case of a big marketing campaign failing to activate anyone who wasn?t already going to be part of the audience.
Let me explain what I mean: There are people who may not have considered themselves the target audience for The Expendables but who were lured in by the promise of a decent time watching things go boom at the hands of a bunch of muscled heroes. Likewise There were likely people who wanted nothing to do with EPL but who were won over by the charm of Julia Roberts.
But unless you spoke the language Pilgrim was talking with fluently already the movie probably didn?t prove to be interesting enough to take a chance on.
See that?s what happens with truly original movies ? or any other form of artistic expression. They talk to their audiences on a completely different level than anything else. They expect people to be intelligent and well-versed and then reward that knowledge with a product that delivers on the promise, as this movie?s outstanding average critical rankings ? an A- ? show it did.
Sometimes, though, it?s not worth taking the risk on something different when the familiar is easily within reach. Universal is to be lauded for taking a step into the unknown with Scott Pilgrim and I hope the movie makes a ton of money for the studio over the long-haul.
Is this a marketing failure? Absolutely not. The campaign reached the intended audience and many of them turned out for the film?s opening weekend. It sold the movie well and, presumably since I didn?t hear any significant backlash, accurately. It?s just a case of the alternatives reaching more people by offering something familiar and non-threatening, hindrances that go away once the movie hits home video.