twopointouch

The verdict is in. Now its opening weekend is over, it’s time to count the votes on Snakes on a Plane.

This is what the public thought, comparing the takings from it’s opening weekend in the US to those of other summer blockbusters:

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - $135.6M
Cars - $60.1M
Superman Returns - $52.5M
Talladega Nights - $47M
Step Up - $20.7M
World Trade Center - $18.7M
Snakes on a Plane - $15.8M

OK. and err… here’s what the blogosphere was saying about the film prior to last weekend: “the event of the millenium”, “viral marketing management genius”, “It kind of points to the power of the Internet and in some way the evolution of the Internet”, “the folks promoting the upcoming movie Snakes of a Plane have managed to turn a somewhat silly sounding B-List movie into what will undoubtedly be one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters”.

Well, they haven’t and it looks a lot like it isn’t.

So what does that mean? Is the blogosphere completely irrelevant to what happens in the real world? Has the viral marketing lobby been carried away by its own hype? Last Sunday, Advertising Age wrote a salutory reality check, reminding the blogosphere that there’s actually not that many of us and that few people are listening:

According to Jupiter Research, 7% of American adults write blogs and 22% read them; about 8% listen to podcasts and 5% use RSS feeds. According to a separate study by WorkPlace Print Media, 88% of the at-work audience doesn’t even know what RSS is. And recent data from word-of-mouth research group Keller Fay indicate 92% of brand conversations were taking place offline.

The scepticism about blogs that these figures suggest may well seem proven by opening weekend of Snakes on a Plane, which appears to have completed defeated the internet’s expectations. (USA Today emphasises this point, as you might expect).

In some repects it is proven, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Snakes.

First of all, as Tara Hunt suggests, the film is quite a different sort of movie to the others on the list. Not only is it certain to have a pretty niche appeal, “this is a movie about the audience”. Think about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Disastrous opening run in 1975, followed by thirty years of packed cinemas every week. Like Snakes, it had the same ’so bad, it’s good’ appeal, which is hardly a mass-market hook. The same element of cult interest is there, albeit transferred to the geek space. There’s the same audience participation elements, with moviegoers shouting out, joining in the dialogue and taking along rubber snakes to make the experience less about watching the film and more about taking part. And that is how the film has been for months, with New Line re-shooting sections to match internet fans’ perceptions that this is a film about Jules from Pulp Fiction in an aeroplane disaster movie. The film’s future prospects are perhaps a lot stronger than its current figures show.

The same thing goes for the statistics quoted above about the blogosphere. Writing, reading and commenting on blogs isn’t all that important right now to the majority of the population. That is changing every week. As the Ad Age article goes on to suggest, their power of influence is already very high, considering they’re so far from being mainstream. In six months, the number of blogs appears likely to have doubled, and the same six months after that. The space between niche and mainstream depends on how fast you’re moving.