I’ve seen a lot of promotion, clips and star interviews for the current movie release The Conspirator lately, but it’s still not performing well at the box office. I think I may know why this is.
In the ad I saw on TV for this movie, the voice-over guy says: “150 years after the end of the Civil War…” (something about how finally the story can be told, blah, blah.) My memory isn’t what it used to be, and I can’t find the ad online (weird, that.), so I’m sorry if I only remembered the part I quoted, but it’s the important part here. See, here’s the thing: 150 years after the end of the Civil War isn’t for another four years! So, naturally when people hear that, they think: “Oh, so this movie isn’t coming out until 2015. So I guess I’ll go see Hop or Rio (or whatever) this weekend.” Do you see the problem here? If your ad makes people think your movie isn’t due to be released until 2015, they’re not going to plan to see it until then. So that probably explains why it’s just #11 at the box office on its opening weekend.
I have to point out something else about this movie that has definitely hobbled it: Yahoo! movies has it listed in the current box office performance list at #11, but when you click on it, it gives you a description of the 1949 Elizabeth Taylor movie The Conspirator instead of this movie.* Huh. Maybe this is some huge (Yahoo! employee) Elizabeth Taylor fan’s homage to her, but it’s just hurting the new movie when it’s confusing potential viewers/movie patrons. What’s even funnier about this is that a movie review of The Conspirator by What the Flick?! (Did you catch that sly, subtle double-entendre there in the name of the review show? Clever!) shows clips from the movie with the ‘Yahoo! movies’ watermark stamped in the bottom right corner! So they know the movie, manage the clips to reviewers, and then they intentionally misdirect people when they look for it in Yahoo! movies? Or could it be simple incompetence? (Somehow, I doubt it.)
What’s funniest about this whole Yahoo! movies kerfuffle (yet another commonly-used word MS Word doesn’t know) is that Yahoo! is a well-known left-leaning website, and as such, it’s weird to see it blocking informational access to a movie that the very reviewers using the film clips stamped with the ‘Yahoo! movies’ watermark call a metaphoric indictment of the whole “War on Terror”/Guantánamo Bay situation. So, wouldn’t they agree with a condemnation of that? But I guess when you really think about it, President Obama is in charge now,† so that might reflect badly on him, since the whole Guantánamo Bay policy hasn’t changed a bit, and since Yahoo! obviously supports him, they might want to prevent anyone from making a connection that might tarnish his image. Either that, or they’re all huge Elizabeth Taylor fans. Whichever you think is most likely.
* This is, completely honestly, the page that came up when I clicked on the weekend box office performance listing for The Conspirator from Yahoo! movies (#11 on the list!) on April 23, 2011, the first weekend for the theater run for the 2011 film The Conspirator (no kidding!){No fair fixing it!}:
And here is the movie review from What the Flick?! that has the clips with the ‘Yahoo! movies’ watermark on them.
† Believe it or not, this did not even occur to me until I started typing this sentence. I was writing the sentence about Elizabeth Taylor when this reminded me of all of the “left-leaning media bias” stuff I keep hearing about (there definitely is some, by the way, on some channels), and wouldn’t it be funny if this could be twisted into an argument for this obvious web-link oversight being part of some liberal-bias conspiracy? But when you actually think about it, maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all. I don’t know. But watch the movie review (but turn down the volume, there is some static here and there), and then consider how this would reflect on the current president if everyone felt the same propaganda pounding at them from the movie as these reviewers did. Who might that effect at the ballot box? (Remember, Bush & Cheney aren’t running anymore.)
