The Mystery of the missing 'Da Vinci Code' critic screenings!

[The Clown Prince]

This question was posed in the recent box office talkback, but I thought it this should have it's own thread. From AOL News...

The Mystery of the Missing 'Code' Screenings
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES (May 16) — Question: How do you market a movie that has near 100 percent public awareness, yet has been seen by almost no one? Answer, as Sony Pictures sees it: Very, very carefully.

In contemporary Hollywood, movies released without first undergoing test screenings, media screenings, "tastemaker" screenings and screenings for critics are fairly rare; that course is usually reserved for duds that studios would rather nobody notice.

For a movie like Sony's "Da Vinci Code" — with huge anticipation, a blockbuster-size budget, a major movie star in Tom Hanks , an Oscar-winning director in Ron Howard and source material read by tens of millions of fans — it is something close to unprecedented. Yet that has been the studio's course.

"The Da Vinci Code" will make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night. Critics and other journalists will first see the movie on Tuesday night, barely allowing them time to write their articles for the Wednesday premiere and Friday opening in theaters around the world.

Even theater owners, who by law must be allowed to see a film before formally booking it for their movie houses, saw the film — running two hours and 29 minutes — only Friday, which by exhibition standards is as last minute as it gets.

The strategy, studio representatives say, is to preserve a climate of mystery and excitement around the movie, despite the fact that anyone who is interested probably already knows the plot.

"There was an inordinate amount of interest in this film, and we wanted to contain the excitement and anticipation," said Valerie Van Galder, president of domestic marketing for Sony Pictures, speaking from London, where executives and the cast had gathered to take a train with selected media representatives down to Cannes. "We wanted people to see the movie for themselves and not react to months of endless debate about the movie."

While that approach has not prevented the debate, it was particularly championed by Brian Grazer, the film's producer, said executives involved with the film, who were granted anonymity because of the studio's policy of secrecy regarding the film. To limit exposure in the age of blogs and constant leaks, both Sony and Mr. Grazer's company, Imagine Entertainment, decided to forgo test screenings, a form of market research usually considered critical to fine-tuning a picture.

In the past, Mr. Howard has said he would be loath to release a film without it. In a 1998 interview with CNN about test screenings, he said: "What I would hate to do is put the movie out there, find out that the audience is confused about something or upset about something that you could have fixed, and go, 'God, I had no idea they'd respond that way.' "

Instead, the film was shown on the Sony lot, with strict security, to close friends and family of the filmmakers, said Michael Rosenberg, the president of Imagine. Their comments were used in place of more scientific feedback, he said.

The concerns, said executives involved with the picture, were that information about the film could start a nit-picking debate over the filmmaker's choices in adapting the book, rather than focus on the movie overall, or that it might fuel religious opposition to the film.

Early in the marketing, tension arose between Sony and Imagine over the approach to take, with Sony more inclined to feed mass interest in the film, and Imagine focused on trying to maintain more of the film's mystery, said executives close to the project. In addition, Sony was worried about contributing to a religious controversy over the perceived anti-Catholic aspect of the film — which has elements in the Catholic Church conspiring to conceal the secret life of Christ — while Imagine wanted to use the controversy as a promotional tool, an executive said.

At one point Sony favored taking out an ad during the Super Bowl, which Imagine opposed. The studio and producers also turned down the offer of a Time magazine cover, which some might consider to be the Holy Grail of free publicity (perhaps a misnomer in this case, however), because the magazine editors needed to see the film to do so.

Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures, disputed the notion of tension with Imagine. "I have been as close to it as anybody, and I found them to be so helpful in this process," he said. "A lot of issues come up that don't normally come up. We're very happy with the result."

With movie research showing awareness of the film at 96 percent, and the barometer of "definite interest" polling at around 60 percent, the studio is most concerned to do nothing that could put a dent in those figures. Industry estimates of the film's expected ticket sales for the opening weekend at the domestic box office range from $70 million to over $100 million. The marketing materials were also designed to nod at elements of the film without revealing too much: first came the iconic image of the Mona Lisa from the cover of the best-selling book, followed by pictures of Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou as the characters trying to solve a murder in the Louvre, followed by a picture of Silas, the evil conspirator from the Catholic group Opus Dei and Mr. Hanks and Ms. Tautou — photographed from above — as they rush past a group of nuns.

But much is at stake with this film, as even the most close-mouthed officials will privately acknowledge. One executive close to the film, who acknowledged being nervous, said, "There are amazing expectations on this title, and there is no knowledge of what the audience and the critics will think."

The Clown Prince

 

[Lord Dalek]

Preserve the mystery eh? Sure Sony, SURE...

 

[Hades]

Huh?

Whatever. I'll be seeing the movie this weekend. It would be nice if thsoe complaining about it would just shut the heck up and let everyone else just enjoy the darn thing.

 

[Sharklady]

The parties claiming that this movie is blasphemous are taking it much too seriously. 'Da Vinci Code' has never claimed to be anything other than a work of fiction, so should be regarded as just an entertainment.

BTW: I'm going to have a special advantage when I see this- I've never read the book!

 

[Scirel]

The parties claiming that this movie is blasphemous are taking it much too seriously. 'Da Vinci Code' has never claimed to be anything other than a work of fiction, so should be regarded as just an entertainment.

I never understood the complaints. Do they or do they not realize it's clearly labeled as fiction and always was?

 

[Temple Fugate]

They SAY they want to keep an air of mystery and secrecy about the film...yet almost every single preview for it has major spoilers. (Though if you haven't read the book, you wouldn't realize it, so that's something I guess.)

Regardless, I like films that don't take the conventional approach when it comes to releasing movies. Imagine is a great company, with many "unconventional" thinkers.

(grumbles about how 24 should have been given the rights to the book like they wanted)

 

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

The parties claiming that this movie is blasphemous are taking it much too seriously. 'Da Vinci Code' has never claimed to be anything other than a work of fiction, so should be regarded as just an entertainment.

!

The story and characters are fiction, but Dan Brown claimed the religious "revelations" are fact.

My problem with Brown is that he seems to want the public THINK he "discovered" some of these things when in actual fact his "shocking revelations" have already been out there for hundreds of years in other novels and forms of entertainment if the lemming masses cared to look.

This of course assumes the Bible is taken as fact. I'm not going to get into an argument about that.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

A recent survey said that 60 percent of those who read the book believed every word. Really.

That's extremely scary.

It proves you can get a large portion of the population to believe anything if you want to. No wonder the Nazis rose to power so easily...

 

[Chris Wood]

It's not really a mystery. Word is the early reviews from Cannes are primarily awful.

 

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

A recent survey said that 60 percent of those who read the book believed every word. Really.

That's extremely scary.

It proves you can get a large portion of the population to believe anything if you want to. No wonder the Nazis rose to power so easily...

I doubt that. I know the world can be largely stupid, but you can make a survey say anything you want if you interview the right people.

Did they ever make a Celestine Prophecy movie? That book was HUGE for a while during the 90s for its mystical babble.

But for people wondering, the Church mainly has a problem with how it is being depicted in this story, because the book purports

Spoiler

that Jesus Christ had a child with Mary Magdalene, which is something the Church doesn't want you to think (or as the Dan Brown would claim, doesn't want you to know).

The controversy is over Brown's claim that this (Jesus with Mary) is FACT, even though he has built a fictional thriller around this theme.

But as I said above, he isn't the first to claim this or use this as part of a story (like he would have you believe). Jane Jensen did this in her Gabriel Knight 3 game, and this theme was also used as well in the Broken Sword games.

There was a recent legal battle between Brown and the authors of a 1980s book detailing this controversy.

 

[Temple Fugate]

If you look underneath the word "FACT:" at the beginning of the book, he writes that the "descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals" are accurate. He never explicitly states that any of the proposed theories concerning them, including the major point of controversy, is real.

But as I said above, he isn't the first to claim this or use this as part of a story (like he would have you believe).

I think Brown is getting a lot of unneccessary flak just because he fails to cite his sources of information. Yes, there have been many examinations of [the main revelation in da Vinci Code], but I also don't see anywhere in the book where Brown says "I personally found out all this stuff myself." It's our own uneducated fault if we think he was the first to discover all this. Doesn't a certain British character in the book actually POINT OUT there have been documentations about the mysteries? Aren't people taking THAT as fact? He could have avoided all this criticism if he simply mentioned specific sources inquisitive readers could turn to if they wanted to do research on their own.

 

[Sharklady]

> The story and characters are fiction, but Dan Brown claimed the religious "revelations" are fact. <

I thought he just said, the existence of these rumors is a fact. Nobody can call the rumors themselves 'facts', since there's no way to prove them.

> A recent survey said that 60 percent of those who read the book believed every word. Really. <

What survey was this? I have a hard time believing that the *majority* of the reading public thinks this is a true story. Sure, it's set in real places and refers to some actual organizations... but so do the James Bond novels.

 

[Hades]

IBut for people wondering, the Church mainly has a problem with how it is being depicted in this story, because the book purports

Spoiler

that Jesus Christ had a child with Mary Magdalene, which is something the Church doesn't want you to think (or as the Dan Brown would claim, doesn't want you to know).

Spoiler

Who cares if he had a child or not! That was like how many hundreds of years ago?

 

[Lord Dalek]

It's not really a mystery. Word is the early reviews from Cannes are primarily awful.

Quoted for truth.

The only reason studios hold back press screenings is when there is a turkey in the oven. They can lie all they want but eventually its always the same.

PS = Tomatometered at a miserable 18%

 

[PeppeRaskell1]

And from what I read on one of the news tickers this morning, the odor from that turkey can be smelled as far away as Cannes, France.

The critics whistled at it (the Euro equipment of what we do at the movies: boo and hiss.)

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

One scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience, and when the credits rolled, there was no applause, only a few catcalls and hisses.

And this was from a Canadian screening as well... I'm still going to see it, but my hopes have been dashed severely.

RT has it at 20% now... not that it's a load better than 18%, but it's more current at least.

 

[D.Shaffer]

My problem with Brown is that he seems to want the public THINK he "discovered" some of these things when in actual fact his "shocking revelations" have already been out there for hundreds of years in other novels and forms of entertainment if the lemming masses cared to look.

I could mention that it's based on a theory most historians laugh off, with certain key points of evidence ending up being forgeries. It's been discredited for a while, but you dont see that mentioned to much.

 

[JLApe]

And this was from a Canadian screening as well... I'm still going to see it, but my hopes have been dashed severely.

RT has it at 20% now... not that it's a load better than 18%, but it's more current at least.

If both critics and audiences don't like it, that is not a good sign.

Having read the book (into the second time), I'll still check it out. But only for curiosity sake.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Don't get me wrong I really do want to see this film. Even more so now since its laid a goose egg.

EDIT: 19%, it's falling now!

 

[Temple Fugate]

Don't get me wrong I really do want to see this film. Even more so now since its laid a goose egg.

EDIT: 19%, it's falling now!

It's back up to 20%.

I never had an irresistable desire to see this film, but now I really want to go just to see how the hell they could have possibly gotten it wrong. The book is practically a movie treatment.