Hollywood Against Preview Reviews

Movies
LATimes reports how Hollywood is against internet websites that post reviews from test screenings:
Much more troubling to the studios, Aint-It-Cool-News and other Web sites post their users' appraisals of movies they see at test screenings--the screenings that studios have long used to gauge audience response and to determine what, if any, changes should be made to the movie before it is released.
"You're taking something out that's a work in progress, but then there's this report online that says it's awful and here's why, and then maybe the other media pick it up and your movie is in trouble with the public, even before it's ready for the public," says Bruce Berman, former president of worldwide theatrical production for Warner Bros. and now chairman and chief executive of Village Road Show Pictures Entertainment.
"It's like reviewing a book or a newspaper story before the final editing is done," Berman says, "and it discourages risk-taking and innovation."
Journalists counter that newspaper and book publishers make their own decisions about the final form their products will take; they don't test them on prospective readers beforehand. As long as movie makers feel compelled to test their movies with audiences, rather than relying solely on their own judgment, reporters say they have to accept the consequences.
But moviegoing, unlike reading a book or newspaper, is not generally a solitary experience, and studios say that reactions can best be judged by showing a movie in a group setting, preferably a group not involved in the movie-making process. When one member of that test group immediately posts a report, though, the consequences can be devastating.
Warner Bros., for example, blamed Aint-It-Cool-News for the bad buzz that preceded the release of "Batman and Robin" and contributed to the film's box office flop in 1997. Columbia Pictures says a Los Angeles Times story on a reported test screening that they insisted never took place helped kill Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Last Action Hero" in 1993. Other studios cite similar examples.

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