The film Snakes on a Plane has yet to be released, but already enjoys cult status in cyberspace, thanks to little more than its over-the-top title, which just begs to be parodied.
Snakes stars Samuel L Jackson as an FBI agent who fights off hundreds of snakes released by a Mob boss on a commercial flight in a attempt to kill a key witness.
Written for a PG-13 rating, New Line Cinema reshot several scenes to bump up the sex, gore, and foul language to an R rating to satisfy fan expectations. The David R Ellis directed film will hit theatres on August 18.
New Line briefly retitled it Pacific Flight 121, but Jackson fought for the original blunt title. ”People either want to see this movie or they don’t,” Jackson told fans at a comic-book convention last month. ”For people that have a fear of flying, and people that have a fear of snakes, it will be a kind of double whammy.”
The amorphous online community grew spontaneously in response to the film, according to New Line director of field marketing Elissa Greer. ”It’s the title that launched a thousand websites,” she said.
Even its abbreviated form, SOAP, as insiders call it, speaks of, well, soap opera.
Chattering fans have produced an impressive array of Snakes stuff, from T-shirts and fake promotional posters to mock advertising trailers and theme songs. Greer’s favourites have been Pigs on a Train and Camels on a Submarine.
”It’s amazing how this thing just took hold of itself,” said Greer. ”There is no precursor to this phenomenon. We just let the fan sites run amok like a weird little club.”
The fan-based merchandising hit a high-dollar mark with film-inspired bling. Necklaces range from an understated sterling sliver to an over-the-top, gold-and-diamond encrusted model for nearly $4 000. The design, like the title, leaves nothing to the imagination: two giant snakes coiled around an airplane.
A website launched last week that allows users to send a personalised message in the voice of Jackson was so overloaded with traffic that it soon crashed. The site has received more than half-a-million visitors, according to New Line.
YouTube, the popular web-based clearinghouse of viewer-created video, contains dozens of spoofy SOAP trailers, skits and music videos.
According to one online dictionary, the phrase ”snakes on a plane” has infiltrated the American vernacular. Urbandictionary.com defines it as an expression of fatalism and resignation, or ”an apocalyptic amount of increasing danger and tension”.
By harnessing the power of web-based communities, the Snakes phenomenon presents itself as a new Hollywood marketing model.
New Line teamed with Tag World, an online networking site, to hold a Snakes song contest where the winning song would be included in the movie soundtrack. The site received more than 500 entries, and selected Los Angeles-based band Captain Ahab for their song Snakes on a Brain. The song will be played under the film closing credits.
One fan created a blog, titled Snakesonablog, with the mission of securing an invitation to the Hollywood red-carpet premiere of the film. Brian Finkelstein, a law student in Washington, launched his blog in January as a place for Snakes fans to gather and post original Snakes art and video clips.
The site includes a petition for Finkelstein to grace the red carpet, a plea that was answered on Monday with a formal invitation from New Line Cinema.
These days, Hollywood banks on what is known as ”pre-awareness” for box-office gold. Films increasingly draw on audience familiarity with popular comic books and video games. But Snakes had a built-in audience before it even had a finished product.
”The movie does deliver,” said Greer. ”It’s really a fun ride. It will make you laugh one minute and jump out of your seat the next.”
But the unprecedented wave of viral marketing has set Snakes in a precarious position, says Movies.com editor Lew Harris. ”New Line brilliantly turned a dreadful movie into a phenomenon, but the big question is: Will it live up to the hype?” he said. ”It’s certainly the most anticipated movie of August.” — Sapa-AFP