Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates | Tagged: box office, film, footloose, paul anderson, paul ws anderson, puss in boots, three musketeers

TiVo Are Snooping On Your Remote Control And Using It To Predict Box Office Results

It's probably general knowledge by this point that your TV viewing habits are being observed by an army of analysts.

Reports by TiVo about what people fast forward through are starting to look worrying for Summit Entertainment's The Three Musketeers, which opens in US cinemas on October 21st, and in UK cinemas today.

According to Big Brother, around 20% of people sped past advertisements for Musketeers, apparently deciding that the sight of Matthew MacFadyen in a fake looking beard and woman tied to a blimp figurehead aren't worth slowing down for.

Somewhat more surprising is the fact that around 25% of people skipped past ads for Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, which has pleased audiences and critics alike.

But looking at the box office results for Drive, which scored a modest $21.3 million in its opening weekend, it seems like TiVo's theory that ad-skipping means screening-skipping is pretty accurate, and a great tool for predicting how well a film will do.

To put this into context, here are some more stats from the TiVo number crunchers.

In third place at the moment is the Footloose remake, which caused only 13.7% of people to pound on the fast forward button, probably because of all the tanned girls in short shorts and cowboy boots dancing around.

In second place is Puss In Boots (I'm telling you, boots are the key to success in a trailer) where only 11.7% of people didn't have time for the CGI feline.

But scoring right at the top, with only 9.9% of people able to resist it charms, was Sony's Courageous, a police drama that opens on November 4th.

TiVo stand by the usefulness of these stats for box office prediction, claiming that the top three are "trending to open pretty well". So in the spirit of contrariness I'm going to go out and see The Three Musketeers. Bad fake beards forever! Hooray for French people with American accents! It's going to be amazing.

Footnote: an alternative headline for this post was almost "Shocking new evidence shows people fast forward through the Three Musketeers trailer."

The TiVo report was brought to our attention by Deadline.

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