newmediaMike

Duped by Disney

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Unless you are the parent of a young girl or a female tween you may not be able to relate to this story.

For a month or so now Family Channel has been running ads for the upcoming Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus 3D movie. It was to open Feb.1 and run for a LIMITED ENGAGEMENT. My daughter was convinced this was one special movie, after all it was only going to be out for a limited time. At first I thought it was a marketing ploy, but rather than risk my daughter missing what could be the event of the year (so far) I went to the website to buy tickets , which by the way was the ONLY way you could buy them. Plus the movie was playing in only a handful of theaters, so this was a special limited engagement. I was convinced.

I checked the Friday shows - all sold out. Saturday - same thing, every show was sold out. Uh oh … we HAD to see this opening weekend, because that’s all everyone would be talking about at school on Monday. Sunday, most of the shows were sold out except for the late evening and noon show. Late evening is out, after all it was a school night, so I booked the Sunday noon show for my daughter and her friend.

Apparently the movie was great and I was the hero. My daughter saw it opening weekend and had  fodder for the Monday morning schoolyard chat.
Monday morning I’m flipping through the paper and I see that the Miley Cyrus movie was number 1 in North America with an opening weekend of $42 million.  Of course it was, we parents made sure our daughters didn’t miss out on this must see event of the year.

But what’s this? Later in the article they said that Disney had decided to extend the run and let the movie “run it’s course”.  Run it’s course? I thought this was a limited engagement? How much longer is the movie going to play? 3, 4 6 weeks? That’s not what they were saying earlier.

I feel totally used by the Disney marketing machine. If I was an outside observer, I might say - “Good on ya Disney, nice little ploy, say it was a limited engagement, get them scrambling into the theater then let it run it’s course”. But I’m not an outside observer, I have a tween who thought she was seeing something special, something that only a few people would get to see if they acted in an expedient manner. Now that all she has seen is a regular movie, the shimmer has been taken away, the specialness tarnished. She is not happy at all.

Nice way to betray the trust of your core audience and those who pay the admissions Disney.  maybe this works with DVD sales but with movie releases, don’t pull this again. You can only fool us once.