The newest version of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio caught many in Hollywood by surprise this weekend when it earned an astonishing $51 million at the box.
Most pundits were predicting the film would earn $40 million.
There was plenty working against the film. Director Baz Luhrmann has never had a bone fide financial hit. The movie is a period piece that some might consider a real downer and the critics didn't love the film. It earned a 48 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes where critics called the movie "not entertaining," a "failure" and "overblown."
But anyone paying close attention to social media over the past few months saw a tale emerging about a film that was going to be a hit. Back in September, Warner Bros. took Gatsby out of the winter 2012 Oscar-contender movie season and moved it to summer 2013. It seemed like a strange move at the time. The film is definitely more Oscar-bait than summer blockbuster and many thought the studio was moving the movie to give it an honorable death.
But it turns out maybe Warner Bros. was on to something. At the time, the social conversation around the movie on Twitter and
Things reached a peak in the last week. According to Fizziology, Gatsby was mentioned more than 780,000 times over the past weekend. It became a trending topic on Twitter. By comparison, Iron Man 3, which topped the box office over the weekend with $72.5 million, had around 405,000 mentions.
Iron Man 3 occupied way more of the social conversation when it opened last weekend earning more than 1 million mentions. But according to the inside source, over the course of the last few months, there were actually more people talking about Gatsby than Iron Man.
Over the past few days there were also some very high profile people tweeting about the movie. Kim Kardashian told her 17.7 million followers that she loved the movie. Victoria Beckham raved about the clothes and Shay Mitchell told her 1 million fans she was listening to the soundtrack on repeat.
The film's success is a lesson for Hollywood. Marketers need to ensure that films are being talked about as much as possible. Of course convincing people to talk about a film is hard. It's not something you can force. But it is a great way for the studios to make sure that their less obvious films have the best chance at the box office.
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