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
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Chracter Names Revealed On Trading Cards December 11, 2014December 11, 2014 Normally we’d learn about characters through the source material, a plot synopsis, or straight from the cast or crew. But given that everyone is so tight-lipped about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, trying to get information like names of the characters is next to impossible. We already know that the… Read More
Final “X-Men: Days Of Future Past” Trailer Finally Sees Mutants Fighting Sentinels April 15, 2014April 17, 2014 After some truly astonishingly weird Carl’s Jr. ads, and an wonderful viral marketing campaign, Fox has released one final trailer for X-Men: Days Of Future Past. And it is a pretty exciting trailer, especially since the last few felt lackluster. You know the story, the war between mutants and humans… Read More
Infographics: How Videos Go Viral, and How Social Media Users Watch Video January 27, 2011 Mashable has found two interesting infographics that deal with viral elements. The first one was made by Brian Sieber using data from The Jun Group, and it focuses on how videos go viral. The second is from Lab42, who did a study on how American social medias watch video, specifically… Read More