Why no one cared about 'Snakes on a Plane'

I haven't caught up with "Snakes on a Plane" yet, and the matter seems less pressing with each passing day. With just a $15 million opening weekend after months of incessant hype, the "Snakes" party was over the minute it began.What happened? How could a movie that had so completely permeated the public consciousness have sold so few tickets at the box office? Sure, thanks to its low budget and inevitable appeal on DVD, the picture will ultimately make a profit, but not nearly the mountainous one that was predicted.

Just $15 million on opening weekend? So that's what a snake looks like when it falls flat on its face.

The problem was a basic misunderstanding of the monetary value of Web chatter. All of the to-do over "Snakes" was Web-driven - spoof sites, chat room exchanges, video parodies - none of which, as was proven when the Internet bubble burst, necessarily translates into cash.

When the traditional media started reporting on all the Internet activity, the focus was mostly on how it would positively impact the movie. Few people - including the folks at New Line Cinema, which produced "Snakes on a Plane" - seemed to take into account the derisive tone used by the movie's "fans." Most of the bloggers talking about "Snakes on Plane" were making fun of it, and apparently not in the "it's so bad it's worth my $10" kind of way.

What's the lesson here? It's twofold: that the Internet's bark is worse than its bite, and that there's a difference between blogging with and blogging at.

Read more by Josh Larsen at LarsenOnFilm.com. Contact him at jplarsen@scn1.com or 630-416-5206.