LOS ANGELES, Aug. 20 — “Snakes on a Plane,” the wildly hyped high-concept movie, turned out to be a Web-only phenomenon this weekend, as that horror-comedy starring Samuel L. Jackson took in just $15.2 million at the box office in its opening days.
Samuel L. Jackson in “Snakes on a Plane,” which did not meet expectations at the box office over the weekend.
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The tepid opening dashed the hopes of Hollywood and especially of New Line Cinema, which released the movie, that vigorous marketing on the Internet would be a powerful new way to propel fans into the theater at a time when movies are working hard to hold their own against other forms of entertainment.
“We’re a little disappointed,” said David Tuckerman, president for theatrical distribution for New Line. “There were a lot of inflated expectations on this picture, with the Internet buzz. But it basically performed like a normal horror movie.”
Projections within Hollywood and on Internet movie sites had predicted that the film might take in anywhere from $20 million to more than $30 million on its opening weekend.
Instead “Snakes,” which opened for midnight screenings on Thursday, drew a respectable number of fans on Friday, but fell off 18 percent on Saturday and was expected to fall off still more on Sunday, as have other horror films in the past.
“We see that Internet interest in a movie doesn’t necessarily translate to good box office,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a company that tracks the box office. “To some, the marketing was more exciting than the movie. Everyone was talking about the movie. But you have to convert that talk into moviegoing, otherwise it’s just talk.”
The film was still the No. 1 draw at the box office over the weekend when including $1.4 million from the Thursday-night screenings. “Talladega Nights” ranked second, drawing an estimated $14.1 million in its third weekend in theaters, for a total of $114.7 million. “World Trade Center” followed, taking in $10.8 million, and has sold $45 million in tickets since opening on Aug. 9. Another new release, a young-adult comedy from Universal titled “Accepted,” took in an estimated $10.1 million.
Overall, the box office is running solidly ahead of its disastrous performance in 2005, with no major movies left to be released in the summer season. Summer ticket sales now total $3.4 billion, up 7.6 percent over last summer’s total of $3.15 billion, according to Exhibitor Relations. Attendance is also up 4.36 percent over last summer.
But the improved numbers have not dissipated Hollywood’s concern over long-term prospects for the movie industry, and “Snakes on a Plane” was an important experiment for determining whether movie fans active online would also become paying customers at the movie theater.
Many films have been given a strong presence on the Internet to build anticipation, but “Snakes on a Plane,” a relatively low-budget movie at $32 million with a decidedly B-level vibe, took the practice to a new level. Fans who visited the official Web site could enter a telephone number to send people a call from Mr. Jackson urging them to see what he suggested could be the best movie in history. This past weekend, people who bought tickets online could participate in exit polls by sending opinions by text message to the studio.
New Line had even incorporated ideas from bloggers, who began writing about the movie months ago, excited at the prospect of Mr. Jackson, with his ultracool image, facing down a plane full of snakes. The filmmakers even reshot some scenes at the bloggers’ suggestion to make the movie harder-edged, with more rough language and violence to give it an R rating. They also added a signature line for Mr. Jackson, who shouts an unprintable epithet about the snakes that originated from Web chatter.
In addition to these efforts, New Line conducted a more traditional marketing campaign, spending upward of $20 million on movie prints and on advertising, including television. The studio declined to screen the film for critics before the opening.
But all this effort, it seemed, yielded no more results than the conventional methods used by Hollywood for decades.
Mr. Dergarabedian suggested that perhaps the most entertaining part of the experience was talking about the movie on the Internet. “If you’re a heavy blogger, or Internet user, maybe you’re not a heavy moviegoer,” he said. “You may spend a lot of time on the Internet, on MySpace, talking about movies, and that was the most fun part of it. The movie was almost an afterthought.”
At New Line executives were still chewing over the results of their rollicking Internet experiment. “We’ll make money with this picture, it’s just more disappointing because of all the inflated expectations,” Mr. Tuckerman said. “Now we have to sit back and figure out how to take the lessons from it.”
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