MPAA Claims Success of The Dark Knight is Due To Anti-Piracy Campaign
Oh dear… these MPAA folks sure don’t live in the same world we do. I don’t know what kind of crack they’re smoking, but it appears that they are trying to take credit for a good portion of The Dark Knight’s record breaking opening weekend ticket sales. Apparently it has little to do with how good the movie actually is, but more to do with their successful anti-piracy campaign, which managed to keep bootleg copies of the film off the internet for the first 38 hours after the movie’s release. Can they really be this ignorant?
According to the L.A. Times, Warner Bros mounted an “unprecedented anti-piracy strategy”, which involved thorough tracking of advance copies, staggering deliveries of film reels, and random spot checks in theatres, checking for cameras. The move, apparently, “paid off”. They point to the 2003 release of Ang Lee’s Hulk as an example of piracy hurting a film’s bottom line, where an early leak of a rough cut of the film supposedly affected second week ticket sales (it couldn’t have been bad word of mouth, obviously!). Personally I think this is a load of crap, and someone is just trying to give themselves a pat on the back and/or justify the money they spent. What do you think… could there be any truth the the argument? Did the lack of piracy allow The Dark Knight to earn $313 million in its first 10 days?
Comments (8)
What a crock of shit.
The previews here were so tight that you had to leave your phone at home in case you wanted to record the 2 and a half hours on your camera phone.
This all has to do with anticipation and great word of mouth.
Posted by Swarez on July 29th, 2008First success of the film has been credited to Batman’s similarity to Bush and now this? Give me a break. Fucking MPAA. This is just a bunch of bullshit. Maybe if they provided a wide and throrough study comparing anti-piracy crackdowns, grossing numbers, and numbers of downloaded movies, whereby they would prove some sort of correlation I might be inclined to consider the MPAA anything but a bunch of blood-sucking parasites (which is what they actually are.)
Posted by Matt on July 29th, 2008“Did the lack of piracy allow The Dark Knight to earn $313 million in its first 10 days?”
Ha!
Posted by Rian on July 29th, 2008The movie looked so goodie-good people didn’t want to download it you bitch ass MPAA fucks!
Posted by Ryan M. on July 29th, 2008I wonder if there will be backlash for this film anytime soon– I don’t know about everyone else, but I am so sick of hearing the name “The Dark Knight.”
That’s not a slight on the choice of stories on Film Junk– this media saturation is across the board, in every medium.
At this point, I just want “Tropic Thunder” to come out.
Posted by Jon Rocks on July 29th, 2008If the ongoing hype was about any other film, I’d totally agree with you Jon, but for the first time in a long while I think the hype is justified, and I want this film to be as celebrated as possible. I’m always bitching on this website about how blockbusters are largely sh*t, have no idea about how to truly entertain, and don’t credit their audience with any intelligence. TDK is the well made blockbuster that I’ve been waiting for for AGES, and it deserves the praise IMHO.
Agree with Sean on his post. Even if someone hands me a pirate copy on DVD right now, I intend to go and watch it one more time in the cinema, and that’s something I never really do.
Posted by Liney on July 30th, 2008As great as THE DARK KNIGHT looked in ultra-crisp IMAX, how I really wanted to see the film was in blue-tinged theatre-cam recording with hollow sound and digital compression artefacts on a DVD-boot that skips and stutters in my DVD player.
Yep, I’m glad the MPAA convinced me that I should be watching (but more importantly, paying) in the theatre.
Thanks MPAA!
Posted by Kurt on July 30th, 2008One of these days, the MPAA will realize that they wont be able to prevent pirating of movies.
As to the suggestion that the success of the movie was because of the campaign? I find that hard to believe.
I believe that the success of the movie is it’s excellent production quality. From the acting, the writing and the overall way the movie was put together, it’s simply a good movie that is best experienced in the big screen theatre atmosphere.
If they want movies to succeed in the box office, they need to focus on movies that cater to that experience. I’m sorry, but movies like “Step Brothers” is not in any way a better experience on the big screen than it is in the home.
Save movies like that for home theatre experiences, and focus the big screens on these “block busters” rather than flooding our movie theatres with crap.
Quality, MPAA. Focus your efforts to the consumers changing needs in this new age and find a way to make this change work for you.
Posted by m0rtis on August 2nd, 2008Leave a Reply