Despite having racked up several million views of his movie clips on YouTube, snagged the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and received priceless publicity from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Borat apparently doesn’t have enough visibility in the U.S. to open a movie in wide release during the weekend of November 3.
Citing a recent poll indicating that just 27% of moviegoers are familiar with the fictional journalist portrayed by comedian Sascha Baron Cohen, Twentieth Century Fox has reduced the number of screens on which “Borat” will open by 60%:
“Our research showed it was soft in awareness,” Bruce Snyder, Fox’s distribution chief, told the Times. In turn, Borat will start off in 800 theaters Nov. 3 and then expand to 2,200 the following weekend, after interest in the movie is piqued and audiences have gotten Borat’s opening-weekend competition—Disney’s The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and DreamWork’s Flushed Away—out of their system.
That’s the plan, anyway — but is it a wise one? Does Fox honestly believe that the unique individuals who found the first two “Santa Clause” movies hilarious enough to warrant a third installment are really the same people who are going to go see “Borat”? And are they not the least bit worried about cutting the legs out from under their cult-classic-in-the-making before it even gets rolling?
Given the buzz that has been building behind this picture to date, execs over on the Fox lot may be worried about ending up with a “Snakes on a Plane”-level disappointment on their hands…but they shouldn’t be. The key difference is that no one really expected “SOAP” to be a high-quality movie, while reviews for “Borat” have generally been very positive.
Okay, so maybe 73% of moviegoers don’t know who Borat is yet…but does Fox really expect to fix that by reducing their opportunity to get to know him?
