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CNN SUNDAY NIGHT
Interview With Aaron Schatz
Aired May 25, 2003 - 22:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: And as you know by now, it is Memorial Day weekend. After a day at the beach or the pool, you may want to spend some time at a cool theater with a tub of popcorn, a big one, and your favorite drink. And there's lots of good movies out there to see, and more blockbusters on the way.
Aaron Schatz is a columnist with Lycos.com. He joins us live from Boston to talk about the top movie searches on the web. And Aaron, let me make sure I understand this correctly. You go about doing -- you're surveying by how many people go to different Web sites, and the counting of those hits? Is that right?
AARON SCHATZ, LYCOS.COM: It's actually not as much who visits a Web site, but who is searching for terms on our search engine on Lycos. You know, people come everyday. They've put in millions of search terms, ranging from, you know, IRS, to movie titles, to celebrity names. And we count those all up to figure out what's popular now and what's going to be popular in the future.
SAVIDGE: And what looked like the biggest hit so far, from you've gleaned?
SCHATZ: Oh, absolutely, "The Matrix Reloaded" has been getting searches for years. It first showed up on our top 50 terms list months ago. And it's really just gotten a ton of searches, twice as popular as any other term last week.
SAVIDGE: Okay, that one I probably could have figured. What do you think are some of the sleepers out there?
SCHATZ: The big sleeper for the summer, we think, is going to be "Dumb and Dumber," the sequel to the Fairly Brothers Film with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels from a few years ago, with completely differently actors, totally different writers and directors, but it's already getting a lot of searches. It has for months.
There was a point a month ago where it was actually getting more searches than "Terminator 3," although "Terminator 3" has moved back ahead of it.
SAVIDGE: Wow. Well, are there any big budget movies out there that maybe aren't getting any hits and could be paving their way to being a flop?
SCHATZ: Yes, you know, with big budget science fiction and action movies, most of them get searches. They've been hyped months, even years ahead of time.
But there's one that's really not getting that many compared to the others. And that's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" with Sean Connery, based on an Alan Moore comic book about heroes of literature of the 1800s who are sort of superheroes.
They're advertising it, but it's not getting a lot of searches. It doesn't seem to have as big an audience as things like "Hulk" or "Terminator 3."
SAVIDGE: All right, let's test the science. Have the hits been matching with the bucks that have been made at the box office?
SCHATZ: Yes, absolutely, they have. Obviously, "Matrix Reloaded" and "X-2" and another good example of this "Bruce Almighty," not being a big budget action flick, we were not getting a lot of searches for it until a couple of weeks ago. And then when the commercials really hit television, the searches went up and up. And we realized this was going to be a hit. And obviously, this weekend, it was the number one movie at the box office.
SAVIDGE: How accurate, how close do we see these numbers?
SCHATZ: They're pretty close, just with the knowledge that science fiction and action movies that have been hyped online for years ahead of time do get more searches than things like romantic comedies or kids movies, although there is one kid movie that is getting a lot of searches right now. And that's "Finding Nemo," a lot of searches for this one, more than we get for almost any other animated picture for the summer. And this one looks like a big hit.
SAVIDGE: And are there any indications that the movie industry is picking up on the way you're tracking here?
SCHATZ: Yes, well there have been a couple of years now where they've been advertising movies on the web. One of the best examples was a couple of years ago with the sort of hidden advertising scheme with "AI," where they invented a number of Web sites that were related to the characters in the film.
Obviously with "The Matrix," you have the combination of "The Matrix" Web site with animated shorts that appear on their Web site, that connect in with both the film and the video game of "The Matrix," Enter the Matrix, which itself, the video game has -- was on our top 50 list this week. And with things like X2, you know, the X- Men have such a series of characters and a history behind them, that they use that and those fans to promote the movie online for months.
And then even after the movie, to promote back the comic book to the people who enjoyed the movie.
SAVIDGE: This might be a bit out of your realm, but with all the success of a 2, do you think then sequel 3 is in line?
SCHATZ: Oh, I'm sure X-3 is on the way. SAVIDGE: Yes, I bet it is. OK, Aaron Schatz, I appreciate it very much from Lycos, a columnist there. Thanks for you insights on the hits.
SCHATZ: Happy Memorial Day.
SAVIDGE: Appreciate it. And to you, thanks.
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