Social Cinema Roundup: Marley, Milyoni & Prometheus

Hollywood continues to get smart about using social media and technology to reach today’s technically savvy and connected audiences. (Read: compete with shorter attention spans and cat videos).

Some interesting stories of late, including Twitter’s recent explosion of Titanic-focused tweets surrounding both the 100^th anniversary of the actual ship’s sinking and the re-release of James Cameron’s Best Picture in 3D. Those two items were enough in themselves, but even more interesting (and shocking) was the spate of Tweets from users realizing that the Titanic sinking was actually a REAL THING THAT HAPPENED and not just a blockbuster film. True story.

Social media also continues to serve as inspiration for films. As Film School Rejects reported, My Week with Marilyn director Simon Curtis is helming Click to Connect, “a dating anthology set in the world of online dating sites like match.com and eHarmony.” Also in the works is a Facebook-inspired teen comedy known as Status Update.

Watch for #Hashtag The Musical!, set to premiere in this writer’s imagination….

Just can’t get enough of the socially goodness.

I jest, but in other cinema-focused social news…

Bob Marley documentary to stream on Facebook same day as theatrical release

Shangri-La Entertainment, Tuff Gong Pictures, and Milyoni announced last week that Kevin Macdonald’s Bob Marley documentary, Marley, will be available to stream on Facebook beginning tomorrow, April 20^th, simultaneous to its theatrical release. According to Entertainment Weekly, fans will be able to celebrate 4/20 (coincidence…?) by viewing the film on Facebook for $6.99 through Milyoni’s Social Cinema platform, which will allow them to chat with fellow fans while watching—certainly a no-no in the theater. The film will also be available on-demand.

Milyoni and FANetwork launch two live concert series on Facebook

As MarketWatch reported this week, Milyoni is also working with live broadcast network, FANnetwork, to bring two international concert series to Facebook. Global Sounds and Will Power will bring a month’s worth of exclusive live concerts to the social network, where viewers will get 24 hours of free viewing and the option to unlock extended viewing and additional content with a $5 pledge, including “conversations between artists and fans.” A portion of proceeds will go to causes chosen by the artists.

YouTube scores 600 MGM movie titles

Google continues to add to its online movie catalogs on YouTube and Google Play. In its latest deal, it acquired licensing for more than 600 rental titles from MGM, VentureBeat reported this week. The deal brings some top-shelf titles such as Terminator, Rocky, West Side Story, and Rain Man, with newer titles expected to be on the way.

The move is the latest in an ongoing string of licensing deals, which includes the 500 Paramount titles reported in our last Social Cinema Roundup.

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus gives us a glimpse of future advertising

Fox has been shrewdly leveraging social media, original content, and exclusive placements on targeted sites like Mashable (where this premiered), to build viral buzz around Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus. This week they premiered the video “advertisement” below, pitching the latest “David” android model from the world of the film, which appears to be a spiritual successor to the Alien series. In February, a similar look at the future was presented at the TED conference, where the crowd was treated with a TEDTalk from 2023.

FOX seems to have taken a page out of the enormously successful Hunger Games playbook, producing original content surrounding the film and its world that is not actually from the film. Particularly with a sci-fi flick of this nature, it’s a smart move to engage fanboys (and girls) with shareable content that builds buzz and doles out hints at the movie’s content and tone in small doses.

Have you seen any other cool use of social media and technology to promote films and engage audiences? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.

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Ryan Swearingen is Managing Editor of the Blog Network at Magnet Media and co-founder/editor of Stated Magazine.

Tagged as: Google+, milyoni, Social Cinema, social media & hollywood, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Viral Video, Youtube