Filmmakers are even more maniacal about controlling the information flow than are politicians, but Peter Jackson has been documenting the making of King Kong on the Web.

As Wired points out, it could be shrewd move indeed. Marketing a movie usually costs tens of millions. So if they can get big buzz going for free over the Net, there is much money to be made. Per Wired:

If there's one studio executive who grasps the marketing potential of the production diaries, it's Marc Shmuger, Universal's bearish vice chair. . . . . "We no longer live in a world in which Hedda Hopper is the purveyor of information that people are taking as gospel about the industry," Shmuger says, invoking the '40s gossip maven. "Studio central as mouthpiece doesn't work anymore."

But it is more than marketing. If makes the whole thing into a different product, a total immersion experience that continues over time, with the movie as only a part (albeit the paying part).

It is a variation on the Lord of the Rings event, which went on for three Christmases and ended up in a "$120 Platinum Series Special Extended Edition of Lord of the Rings, a 12-disc set with dozens of bonus featurettes and documentaries."

Since Jackson has shot 400 hours of film for King Kong, the opportunities for numerous riffs is evident. Fans can wallow for decades.

Oh - and by the way, tell me how all this could be done without property rights. Open source moviemaking just won't cut it. BUT, ingenious entrepreneurs, left to work their magic, will indeed combine the new possibilities for openness and participation with property rights to produce entirely new genres.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:54 PM | General

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