Betting On Box Office Opening Weekends Approved Dan Koelsch, June 15, 2010 Want to make some serious money predicting box office opening weekend results? Now you can, at via stock exchange. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a contract with the new Trend Exchange that allow traders to bet on a movie’s opening weekend gross. While a new revenue stream is always nice, there could be some serious downside to this. There has been a lot of opposition to betting on future box-office receipts within the film industry, most prominently from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), as it could actually hurt box office performance. This could also have a serious affect on the viral trends of new releases. Anyone with a stake in the exchange could manipulate word of mouth and other viral marketing of films if they had enough influence. As the L.A. Times writes:In a follow-up interview, [Bart] Chilton [a dissenting commissioner] added that he was particularly concerned about the ability of studios to manipulate the price of a future through marketing and other decisions, which he said was very different from existing futures contracts related to agriculture and other products. I would imagine this would bring a lot more pressure for hyped films to perform well, which only seems to make matters worse for a fickle industry. I don’t have a business degree, so some of the details on this fly over my head, but this is obviously a hotly debated issue. What do you think? News Viral News Box OfficeTrend ExchangeWeekend Box Office
SNL Parodies “The Black Swan” January 11, 2011I know, we’re a bit late on this, but with the MovieViral Awards and site redesign, we’ve been a little busy. In case you haven’t heard, Jim Carrey hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, and he did a pretty funny skit that spoofs Black Swan. Check it out after the… Read More
The Buzz: Interstellar, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hobbit, and More! June 8, 2013June 14, 2013The Buzz is a feature in which we round up the Top 3 most-buzzed-about movie/TV stories of the week (in more-or-less chronological order). Why go through pages of blogs just to find out what everyone is talking about? We’ve got it all right here in The Buzz. Read More
Viral Video Palooza: Superman Is Racist, Hipster Shore, Vandermemes, GLEE Thang, & Nic Cage’s Hair January 21, 2011Sitting at work bored on a slow Friday? Well, here’s a good way to kill about 15 minutes. We have a smorgasbord of viral videos, so check them all out after the break. Read More