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Embracing the Rotten Tomato gap

Business

The site gives movies two scores on a scale from 1 to 100: One is from critics, and the other is from typical viewers who are taking the time to chime in.

Many movies have virtually the same score in each category. But some films have a 40 or 50 point gap. How could the critics be so wrong? A 38% rating from the critics turns into something over 90% from the viewers…

The gap is easy to understand if we think about the smallest viable audience. The viewers who give a documentary, a foreign film or a fan flick a very high score do so because they got exactly what they were promised. They’re not skeptics, waiting to be surprised or impressed. They’re fans, and the movie did exactly what it said it would do.

Every once in a while, a movie gets a very high critical score and a lousy response from viewers… that’s because the marketers of the film (who might not have even bothered to watch it) hyped it as one thing and delivered something less.

Word of mouth and tribal connection never happens from a critical view or a blurb. It happens because the thing you made is worth talking about. That’s a choice, a challenge we can approach with intent.

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