1. "Everyone wants to be number one, and by striving for that goal rather than trying to make the best product possible, all audiences are left with is a pile of unwanted series based on things they’ve already seen, and worse, possibly forgotten..."
2. "However, perhaps now more than ever, we’re living in the most adaptation heavy development season of recent memory."
Merrill Barr talks about how people are making their own T.V. shows based on the show that is currently making the most money. He explains the cycle that occurs and how a fantastic show results in many shows that are below average. Barr also voices his opinion about previous adaptations that have aired on broadcast television.
According to Forbes, the season five premiere of The Walking Dead broke record highs as the most watched cable show of all time, with 17.3 million viewers. The success of The Walking Dead, as an adaptation from a comic book, has led competitors into the dark hole of creating their own adaptations. When brainstorming ideas for new television shows, the people in charge of these TV shows want something that will attract viewers in order to make money. They think that since The Walking Dead is a successful adaptation, all adaptations will do well. This is mostly not true.
Forgetting to look back at the number of views The Walking Dead received in its first and second seasons, the creators of new adaptations are usually unhappy with the initial results of their show. Since, they do not receive the number of views they expected, the directors usually abandon the show in order to create something else (usually another adaptation). They forget about long term effects and want instant satisfaction. The cycle continues until a competitor comes along, with something other than an adaptation.
1. "We felt that this was something that we would start with the core fans and then we could see how much we could broaden it out from there..."
2. "We established early on that the fans really became this self-policing ecosystem. Within the comments they would say, ‘Don’t do that, this film is so much more.’ So, we learned from them the do’s and don’ts, and we learned early on that they didn’t want us to go there."
3. "It was all a tease of the colorful Capitol, which readers had only been able to imagine until then..."
The Hunger Games social media strategist, Danielle DePalma talks about how she got her fans involved with every aspect of the film before its release. There were many things to consider before the release of the film, but ultimately the fans came first. With its ability to reach anywhere in the world, social media is one of the biggest promoters of The Hunger Games and contributes to its success. With its already abundant fan base, consisting of those who have read the books, Danielle used the idea of a imaginary world coming to life in order to focus on promoting images of the "colorful Capitol".
When making an adaptation of a movie, the director must be very careful in order to not upset the readers interpretation of the books world; this can be a difficult task because every reader imagines a different world. Throughout the social media campaign, Danielle DePalma focused on this exact idea and made the center of her marketing campaign, The Capitol. Starting with the broad look of the Capitol and then targeting each character.
Whether we like it or not, movies get created in order to attract fans, and when a film is an adaptation of a well-known book, the fan base is already present. The Hunger Games used a number of social media outlets (see above) to promote their film in order to target as many people as they could. In order to not only promote the film to teenage girls, they stayed away from focusing on the love triangle between Peeta, Gale, and Katniss. The fans controlled the campaign by telling Danielle what to do and not do. All Danielle had to do was read tweets and communicate with her fans. This devotion led her to understand what the viewers wanted to see.
Another big part of any social media campaign is that the fans want to be teased. People react to excitement and cliffhangers but when dealing with an adaptation, the fans already know the storyline, therefore, the marketing strategies are different. This means they must show parts of how something will be shown, as opposed to what will be show. In my opinion, this makes it a little harder to reveal just enough information.
To raise even more excitement, Lionsgate decided to release a Hunger Games App just one day before the big premiere. The movie started as a book, then a film, and now has multiple social media websites. The only thing missing was a game on the Appstore so it was only a matter of time before their app would be released. Media convergence is a phenomenon that allows big companies, like Lionsgate, to gain more money because fans will go to any extreme in order to feel like they are part of the action.
Overall, whatever the fans want, the fans get, and after some time studying the fans of The Hunger Games, Danielle knew exactly what they wanted to see. Social media allowed The Hunger Games to make over $450 million in box offices worldwide, and is the newest phenomena that films are using in order to make money. It's evident that Lionsgate was able to communicate with fans of all ages and manipulate their product in just the right way, but what the fans don't understand is that they are the ones who sucked themselves into the excitement.
