Chatbot Movie Mate in the United States wants to engage moviegoers in cinemas
Moviegoers use their mobile phones during a re-release screening of M3GAN, in which Blumhouse and Meta were testing the Movie Mate app. PHOTO: PHILIP CHEUNG/NYTIMES
Chatbot Movie Mate in the United States wants to engage moviegoers in cinemas
LOS ANGELES – Should people be able to use their mobile phones after the lights go down in movie theatres?
Hollywood has pondered that question for years as a way to make moviegoing more appealing to teenagers and young adults. Cinephiles have always responded with venom, so the answer has always been an emphatic 'no.'
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Despite recent successes such as A Minecraft Movie and Sinners, the North American box office is down 33 per cent from 2019 – just before the Covid-19 pandemic sped up a consumer shift to streaming – according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data.
So in late April , Blumhouse, a horror studio affiliated with Universal Pictures, teamed with Meta to experiment with a technology called Movie Mate.
It is a chatbot that encourages people to tap, tap, tap on hand-held small screens as they watch films on a big one. Users gain access to exclusive trivia and witticisms in real time, synced with what is happening in the movie.
Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has positioned Movie Mate as a way 'to get audiences back in theatres'.
Nearly 20 per cent of moviegoers aged six to 17 already send text messages during movies even though it is against the rules, according to data from the National Research Group, a film industry consultancy. Why not try to channel that instinct, Blumhouse argues, towards what is happening on the theatre screen?
As far as product roll-outs go, this was a muted one. Blumhouse and Universal made Movie Mate available for only one night and only during screenings of M3GAN (2022), about artificial intelligence run amok. The re-release was part of a Blumhouse fan event called Halfway to Halloween.
About 70 people attended a showing at the AMC theatre at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles.
'I know this sounds weird, but please take out your phones,' a bubbly Blumhouse representative told the crowd before the movie started . Instructions were given for how to activate Movie Mate, and the lights went down, revealing an auditorium filled with glowing devices.
'Oh, wow, this is really cool,' Ms Flannery Johnston, 28, said as the chatbot came to life, offering a personalised hello from M3GAN, the diabolical AI doll at the centre of the movie. Over the next 20 minutes, the chatbot served up about 10 messages.
One was a question: 'Do you think they're inventing other dolls like me?' An affirmative reply prompted the response, 'Don't be delulu.'
A moviegoer using the mobile phone during the re-release screening of M3GAN in which the Movie Mate app was being tested.
PHOTO: PHILIP CHEUNG/NYTIMES
Ms Johnston's interest quickly faded, however. 'I started to feel uncomfortable looking at my phone and basically just waited until after the movie was over to read through all the messages,' she said as the credits rolled.
Blumhouse deemed the experiment worthwhile. 'The enthusiasm we saw from fans – especially younger ones – shows there's real interest in finding ways to enhance, not replace, the fun of going to the movies,' said Ms Karen Barragan, a spokesperson for the studio, in an e-mail.
As for the criticisms? 'Not everything is going to be for everybody,' she said.
Movie Mate is part of a grand plan by Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to spread chatbots across all of his apps and other parts of the internet. In his vision of the future, artificially intelligent chatbots will be open to having fun, personalised conversations anywhere at any time. Meta declined an interview request.
Not everyone in the movie business is jumping at the opportunity. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a boutique theatre chain that caters to film buffs, declined to participate in the Movie Mate rollout , as did a smattering of other theatres across the country .
But the two biggest multiplex operators, AMC Entertainment and Regal Cineworld, decided to give it a shot, with the stipulation that ticket buyers had to be clearly informed ahead of time about what to expect.
'How our guests interact with content outside our theatres is changing, and if we have a studio partner that wants to try new things, we are open to supporting those initiatives,' Mr Adam Rymer, Regal Cineworld's chief commercial officer for the United States, said in an e-mail.
To some degree, young moviegoers are forcing their hands.
A Minecraft Movie became a runaway hit in April after young attendees flouted theatre rules about noise and phone use. They threw popcorn, sat on one another's shoulders and shouted 'chicken jockey' – a phrase in the film – all while recording their antics and posting the videos on TikTok and other social media sites.
Last year, Wicked became a box-office smash in part because of a similar dynamic, with fans bursting into song during showings and sharing videos online.
Mr Abhijay Prakash, Blumhouse's president, said Movie Mate could help 'eventise' film releases, creating a fear-of-missing-out urgency among young ticket buyers. 'It's not us saying, 'Come to a movie theatre and randomly be on your phone,'' he said. 'It's about enriching the experience. Younger audiences love to interact with their entertainment.' NYTIMES
Mike Isaac contributed reporting from San Francisco.
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