Buzz Watch: Snakes on a Plane Online PR Makes People Root for an Awful Movie - UPDATED

Authored by Jay Baage on August 18, 2006 - 7:27am.

Samuel L. Jackson is most likely hitting it big this weekend with the B-movie Snakes on a Plane. The movie is gathering a lot of buzz online, as well as offline. Behind the buzz is a wave of interesting and well thought out PR tricks – most notably that Snakes on a Plane is one of the first films to be co-written by bloggers.

The movie Snakes on a Plane premiers Thursday after nearly a year of web-fueled hype. Though the film is not expected to garner critical acclaim – especially since its studio, New Line, decided not to permit critics to review the movie before the premier – it has been praised for revolutionizing how films are marketed online.

While movies that are not released for review usually raise a big red flag, with this movie, people who have never seen it already call themselves "fans" and many hope it will be really awful. This is the works of two people, Josh Friedman, a script doctor in Hollywood, who posted a blog about his sometimes surreal work on the movie and Gordon Paddison, New Line's head of marketing.

Bloggers and web-surfing moviegoers have been a groundswell of excitement for the action film about an FBI agent protecting a witness whom the Mafia tries to kill via snake bite on a long flight.

Fans have created parody videos, songs, and movie posters. New Line Cinema went so far as to partner with CafePress.com, a DIY merchandising store online, allowing fans to become officially licensed partners for the movie, and to sell merchandise they've created using New Line's creative. On the movie’s website, you can also send free personalized messages featuring Samuel L. Jackson’s voice to your friends cell phones.

What’s more, the script was altered based on suggestions from online movie geeks to include a one-liner uttered by Jackson. The line was actually based on a parody of Jackson's tough-guy persona in which online fans had his "Snakes" character saying: "That's it! I have had it with these motherf***ing snakes on this motherf***ing plane!". And just like that, the line was added to the movie and the scene was shot!

For an appearently low-brow movie, it is quite an accomplishment to get a praising article in the renowned MIT Technology Review:

“… the movie's journey - and New Line Cinema's stance on fan involvement in the film - provides a fascinating look at not only how powerful social networking and other forms of Web 2.0 communication have become, but also how those tools have shifted the way media conglomerates approach their fan base.”

Estimates for the first weekend gross of the $35 million production range from the low $20 millions to the low $30 millions, according to the Hollywood Reporter. New Line is opening the movie in 3.555 theaters, the widest release for an R-rated New Line film ever - 630 more than Wedding Crashers last year.

The graph below shows the rise of blog postings containing Snakes on a Plane and Samuel L. Jackson (he is currently the fourth most discussed person in the blogosphere).