Chapter 129: Why It Is Popular
The North American film market was booming. With new movies released every week, it was hard to please everyone; not everyone would like the same movie. To attract cinephiles and general audiences alike to theaters, pre- and post-release promotion was critical.
To a certain extent, promotion existed to pique the curiosity and interest of potential audiences, drawing them into theaters to contribute to the box office.
Duke's willingness to step in front of the curtain and trade insults with film critics was aimed precisely at creating a hot topic to boost promotion.
The incredibly low professional ratings for Independence Day contrasted sharply with its exceptional audience word-of-mouth and box office numbers, creating a bizarre spectacle. If this topic blew up, it would inevitably spark widespread curiosity—why were so many people flocking to a movie that critics rated so poorly? Just how captivating, or how terrible, was young Duke Rosenberg's film to trigger such massive controversy? Why was the director making such a rare public attack against professional critics—was it just to fight back, or did he have absolute confidence in his work?
This had been one of Explosion Bay's favorite promotional tactics in his past life: the more fiercely he fought with critics, the more audiences actually walked into the theaters.
Although the internet could not yet be used for practical promotion, Warner and Fox, along with the media platforms behind them, were powerful enough to easily detonate a trending topic.
As for the actual results, they were best reflected in the statistics.
On Tuesday, July 5, as the Independence Day holiday ended, all films currently in theaters inevitably suffered a box office drop. The single-day box office for Independence Day plummeted out of the tens of millions, dropping to $9.27 million!
Duke appeared on Fox's program that very Tuesday night. This show not only entered countless homes through the fourth-largest television network in the country, but it was also hyped up the next day by numerous media outlets under Time Warner and News Group. By going to war directly with the critics who were still attacking him and Independence Day, he attracted the attention of a large number of eager onlookers. Many curious people also walked into theaters, wanting to see exactly what this fiercely debated movie was all about.