According to box office results, Brüno, albeit the number one grossing movie at the box office pulling in $30.4 million, saw almost a 40% drop in ticket sales from Friday to Saturday, and lost even more steam going into Sunday. And Time thinks Twitter might be to blame claiming that "Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect."
So what changed between Friday and Saturday? Only one thing: people actually saw the movie. With the advent and popularity of instantaneous feedback via social media, especially Twitter, would-be moviegoers could have been heavily influenced by those who were offended, shocked, or simply not entertained by the in-your-face homosexual content and turned to Twitter to post their opinions. After all, Brüno has been a trending topic on Twitter for several days, which means millions of users were exposed to the real-time feedback of those who watched the movie.
Perhaps the most telling sign of Twitter's influence over moviegoers were the plunging ticket sales on day two. Time.com explores the performance of other top grossing movies on their opening and subsequent weekends, all of which showed much less drop off even into their second weekend. The magazine writes, "[Bruno] plummeted nearly 40% its second day, to $8.8 million. Meanwhile, the next five movies on the chart — Ice Age 3, Transformers 2, Public Enemies, The Proposal and The Hangover — all saw substantial increases from Friday to Saturday."
And while studio execs were thrilled by Brüno's preview and opening night numbers and in turn were projecting up to $50 million for the weekend, those first day numbers found a reality check in consumer opinion.
