The Blair Witch Project was made for $50,000 by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez with the hope that the movie would make it on to cable television. On January 24 it was screened to an enthusiastic response at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival. After an all night bargaining session, Artisan Entertainment bought the movie for about $1.1 million. And thus, it began.
Artisan spent about $1.5 million on Web promotion, which involved creation of the official website. The Website had the mythology of the Blair Witch with dates and the events and also the legacy of the Blair Witch. The Website grew to include documents and video clips, all of which maintained the film’s poker faced illusion. Numerous unofficial Websites and fan sites sprung up, and chat sites started picking up rumors of the three college kids who were lost in the woods. The hoax took a life of its own and by the time anyone even heard that the film was about to hit the theatres, a fever level anticipation had been built up.
Rather than buying costly network ad time, the company screened the movie on college campuses and co-produced a special on the Blair Witch with the Sci-Fi channel. This made the audience believe that they had discovered the film for themselves, a belief that fed to the traffic. Just before the release of the movie, Artisan spent $20 million on promotion.
On the weekend of the movie’s release, in January, Artisan took out a full page advertisement in Variety, which read, “blairwitch.com: 21,222,589 hits to date.” The movie was opened in so few screens that shows were selling out days in advance. A lot of demand was created for when the movie was to hit more screens later in August.
The Blair Witch Project grossed $1.5 million in its opening weekend playing only on 27 screens. The film grossed a total of $248,639,099, a phenomenal success. Viral marketing, everybody called it and they all wondered, can it be duplicated?
Ten years later, history was recreated. Only, this time it was the next level.
Oren Peli had been afraid of ghosts all his life. He redecorated his house to the extent of repainting the walls and building a stairwell and all the while studying and doing extensive research into paranormal phenomena and demonology. He prepared no script for the actors, only telling them the story and asking them to improvise, a technique known as “Retroscripting”. After an intense week of shooting, the movie was complete with a total expense of $15,000.
The film was screened at the 2007 Screamfest Horror Film Festival where it impressed a lot of people. For an year, it was screened at numerous film festivals. By the screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the film had gained a cult following and caught the attention of Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks, who wanted to remake the movie with a bigger budget. The film was screened as a test to theatrical audience, who started walking out of the theatre while the movie was running, in fear. In 2009, Paramount Pictures released the picture.
Paramount Pictures executive, Amy Powell, gave the movie to fan sites and Web Masters of eight key markets for midnight screenings, even posting their logos on the movie Website. Audience lined up outside the theatres, hours before the show and Paramount had to book more screens for the movie.
Computers in the theater lobbies encouraged the fans to “tweet your scream” and join the Facebook page. On the Website, users were invited to “demand” the movie to be released in their hometowns.
The movie started popping in colleges and cities for select midnight shows. The positive buzz went viral via Twitter and Facebook. The movie was sold as an experience by Paramount and the strategy paid off wonders. The path paved by Blair Witch ten years ago was once again treaded masterfully, but this time there was one additional feature: credibility. Paramount at no time claimed the movie to be anything but fiction.
The movie was a phenomena world over and grossed $193,355,800. And there are many people, across the globe, who still believe the movie to be true. Need more be said to even guess the movie name.
It doesn’t always take big to create big, sometimes small grows much bigger. And viral marketing gave birth to two phenomena, that redefined movie industry dynamics and the way the world saw things. That and some really smart thinking.
Bharadwaj Battaram
Marque
IIM Rohtak
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