1 Hollywood Online: Movie Marketing Practices in the Dial-Up and Broadband-Eras of the Internet 1994-2009 Ian London A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film Studies in the Department of Media Arts of Royal Holloway, University of London June 2012 2 Statement of Original Authorship This thesis is a presentation of my original research work. To the best of my knowledge the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference to literature and acknowledgement of private discussions with industry members is made. This work was produced with the supervision of Dr. Barry Langford at the Royal Holloway University of London. The thesis has not been submitted for another degree at this institution or elsewhere. Signed: ………………………………………………………………… Date:……………………………………………………………………. 3 Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor Barry Langford for his tremendous support and guidance over the years. I have at times relied on his extensive knowledge of the Hollywood film industry to give me focus and to keep moving the project forwards – without his patience, compassion and motivation I could not have finished the thesis. I thank John Ellis for his direction in his role of supporting supervisor. I also offer appreciation for the feedback and assistance of Finola Kerrigan and Paul Grainge. In particular, I would like to thank Paul McDonald for his kind words of advice which have stayed with me in recent years. Naturally, I also owe a debt of gratitude to a range of artists and executive personnel across the film, internet and design industries. In particular, John Christiano, Marc Wade, Daniel DeFabio, Gordon Paddison, George Shaw and Adam Chang were each incredibly supportive of the thesis and gave this lad from the UK some insight into their fascinating and exciting world. My warmest thanks go to Mark Tapio Kines, whose thoughtful correspondence and extremely helpful feedback challenged some of my thoughts on the developing shape and nature of these industries; his enthusiasm for this topic was infectious and never less than inspiring. Finally, I thank my beloved family for their constant, unflinching support. My dad, my gran, and best pal Steve, through their endless love and understanding, kept me going. Ultimately, I owe the greatest debt to my mum whose knowledge of the performing arts and genuine, cinephiliac love for film I valued and still value so very much. 4 Abstract My thesis provides a historical account of online film marketing practices in the dial- up (1994 – 2001) and broadband (2002 – 2009) eras of the internet. Theatrical exhibition was crucial for the long-term life cycle of a film in the 1990s. It fostered demand in the marketplace and raised public awareness in preparation for film’s subsequent exploitation in a range of ancillary markets where the majority of a film’s profits were made. The growing home entertainment market remained the most important site for generating these revenues, combining television, satellite, home- video and DVD, personal computer, videogame console, and internet technologies. I argue that online marketing represented the culmination of a range of marketing techniques which were developed in the last half century to sustain these revenue streams and to increase film consumption in the US household. I argue that the internet offered the opportunity to bring together these marketing techniques and connect them directly with the developing world of electronic commerce (or “e- commerce”). I outline in the introduction the importance of film marketing in contemporary Hollywood and explain my methodological approach. Chapter One provides an overview of how film marketing is understood in Film Studies and Marketing literature. Chapters Two and Three focus on the major Hollywood studios’ use of the internet as a platform for shaping brand loyalties and for increasing the consumers’ long-term engagement with film. It also considers the changing function of the website as an interactive forum, promotional metanarrative and navigation experience. Chapter Four takes four case studies and examines them for broad 5 developments in the industry. The Conclusion posits that motion picture websites played a crucial role in domesticating and personalising the marketing message for mass audiences, and that internet advertising has found a critical place in the home. 6 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 10 Definitions of Dial-Up and Broadband era internet 14 Motion Picture Websites: Attractions and Limitations 15 Research Questions and Methodology 25 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 31 1.1 The Importance of Value Creation 32 1.2 The Marketing Programme 37 1.3 Film Criticism: Responses to the Development of Online Marketing 42 1.4 Marketing Theory 52 1.5 Conclusion 66 CHAPTER TWO: THE DIAL-UP ERA 1994 TO 2001 67 2.1 Migrating Press Kit Practices to the Web 68 2.2 Finding Film Audiences Online 76 2.3 The First Online Kit Sites 79 2.4 Website Production 85 2.5 Internet Statistics and Growth 89 2.6 Batman Forever 96 2.7 Developing Links for E-commerce 102 2.8 Marketplace Competition 106 2.9 Print Media 110 7 2.10 Website Development: Aesthetics 114 2.11 Community Features 118 2.12 Adult Content 121 2.13 Added Value: Games 123 2.14 Added Value: Gaming 125 2.15 Godzilla 130 2.16 The Blair Witch Project 140 2.17 Viral Marketing 145 2.18 Conclusion 154 CHAPTER THREE: THE BROADBAND ERA 2001 TO THE PRESENT 158 3.1 The Transition to Broadband-Internet 160 3.2 Delay, Growth and Dominance 163 3.3 Display Advertising and Yahoo! Movies 167 3.4 Print Media 175 3.5 TV Advertising 177 3.6 Interactive Trailer: The Bourne Supremacy 182 3.7 Interactive Trailer: Wedding Crashers 187 3.8 Viral Component: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith 191 3.9 Website Standardisation 195 3.10 Display Advertising and the Expandable Banner 200 3.11 King Kong 209 3.12 Niche Audience Constituencies and Snakes on a Plane 220 3.13 Conclusion 226 8 CHAPTER FOUR: PRESTIGE FILMS AND PARTICIPATORY CULTURE IN THE BROADBAND ERA 229 4.1 Marketing Eastern Culture in Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha 233 4.2 De-localised and Localised Web Marketing 241 4.3 Style: Imitation and Allusion 247 4.4 Conclusion 255 4.5 Facing Truman: Parallel Development Films and the Web 256 4.6 First-to-Market Films 257 4.7 Deferred Films 262 4.8 Capote (First-to-Market Strategy) 264 4.9 Infamous (Deferred Film Aesthetic) 277 4.10 Conclusion 284 4.11 Participatory Culture 286 4.12 Syriana From Script to Website 290 4.13 The Syriana Screenplay Online 300 4.14 Conclusion 307 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 309 REFERENCES 322 9 List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 The ad image used repeatedly in the West for Memoirs of a Geisha (© Sony Pictures Entertainment), p.251. 10 Introduction This study examines the role that official motion picture websites have played in the marketing of films produced by the major Hollywood studios. For nearly two decades, the six major studios (Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20 th Century Fox and Walt Disney Pictures) have used movie websites in their marketing to support the theatrical and DVD/home-video releases of their films. Scholars have studied the internet’s impact on the American film industry in relation to Intellectual Property litigation (Bresser, 1999; Sandefur, 2000), digital rights management technologies (Currah, 2007), fan management policy (Murray, 2004), fan resistance to IP policy (Jenkins, 1992; Pullen, 2004; Tulloch, 1995) and the industry’s ongoing struggle with industrialised piracy (Miller et al., 2005). But the studios’ official websites have been often largely overlooked. This has limited our understanding of the history of motion picture websites, their strategic role in the marketing programme, the involvement of filmmakers in website production, and ultimately the commercial, brand value placed upon these sites by film companies themselves. This study therefore builds upon and extends the literature on motion picture websites in Film Studies, and the related Marketing field, by providing a historical account of their development and application in the Dial-Up and Broadband eras of the internet. I suggest that the immediate goal of the studios was to explore and test the internet as a potential site for the sale and distribution of home-video and other merchandise in ancillary markets. Those that moved most quickly to establish presences on the internet in 1994 did so for some of the year’s biggest blockbusters. This experimentation enabled the speculative production of websites which were intended as one-stop locations, where consumers stopped to browse for information on a forthcoming event film and possibly considered making 11 home-video purchases for other film titles released by the same studio. The production of these early websites shaped the direction of future motion picture website design. Star Trek: Generations (David Carson, Paramount Pictures, 1994), Stargate (Roland Emmerich, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1994, France/US), Junior (Ivan Reitman, Universal Pictures, 1994) and Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, Warner Bros., 1995, US/UK) enhanced the ways in which potential consumers and committed fans could interact with blockbuster film. These websites moved the filmgoer/consumer beyond the conventions of offline fanzines, or the collecting of soundtracks and other promotional media, into a new area of experiential engagement within the home. Experiential engagement, which will be considered in Chapter Two, combined the unique attractions of cyberspace navigation with the more traditional pleasures of goal-directed (i.e., shopping for film-related CD’s and videogames) and community-based (online fandoms) fan interaction (Heath, 1976; Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Film websites therefore helped to foster and sustain internet-surfing as an accepted although not totalising practice.