Fan film sites
The colour of the Incredible Hulk's trousers is not something that preoccupies most of us. However, last year, when Ang Lee, the director of The Hulk, suggested the monster might not wear purple ones in the film, he provoked outrage on specialist comic book websites.
Regular visitors to online destinations such as SuperHeroHype and DarkHorizons don't like Hollywood studios messing around with their beloved superhero characters, and they made their views clearly known. When the film opens in the UK tomorrow, the Hulk will be kitted out in his traditional purple trousers. No one at Marvel will admit that specialist film websites are forcing Hollywood studios to make changes to the portrayal of comic book characters, but they do accept that their influence is now growing in a number of ways.
"Producers and directors at Marvel studios are aware of them. They do reference them from time to time," says a spokesperson for Marvel. "They are aware how much the fan base means to these characters and the films. There is an element of respect for these sites."
One of the more influential specialist film sites is The OneRing, which is regarded as the fount of all knowledge for the Lord of the Rings films. The site claims to be receiving a staggering 20m web visits a month. However, it is not clear how many of those are unique visitors. When New Line Cinema discovered that Erica Challis, one of the site's editors, was taking photos on the set of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in New Zealand, they sent a bailiff to her home and served her with a trespassing notice. Her experience was posted on the Tolkien site, fans rebelled and the film's director, Peter Jackson, subsequently invited Challis on to the set as an apology.
"Hollywood production companies have started to take notice of the fan base that can be created online," says Michael Regina, an editor of OneRing, who adds that the site now enjoys a very close relationship with the Hollywood team behind the Lord of the Rings films. "We have a good relationship with them. We're on first-name terms. We can email them and ask them questions. We have met Peter Jackson and all the crew."
Regina says that the studios are becoming increasingly eager to keep online fans happy by releasing promotional footage early and giving them snippets of information as the hype for releases builds.
Harry Knowles, the influential editor of AintItCoolNews, says he can put reviews on his site, which are picked up and carried by nearly every paper in the US. He compares film websites to the life of an American folk hero. "The internet is the Paul Revere of news. It's the first place you hear what is going on and the rest of the world scrambles to find that out."
Knowles is used to the Hollywood studios trying to woo him, but he is determined to "keep the site straight".
In the late 1990s, Knowles accused Joel Schumacher, the director of Batman and Robin, of taking the film away from its dark comic origins. While the film did well at the box office, some commentators have credited Knowles with being responsible for delaying the production of future Batman films.
Knowles has already made it clear on his site that he likes The Hulk. But with its study of the workings of the sub-conscious, he sees it as more of an art house film than a traditional summer blockbuster.
Here in the UK, Hollywood is taking no chances and The Hulk has been promoted online for about a year. "Film companies are taking the web more seriously than they did a couple of years ago," says Oliver Swanton, co-founder of Way To Blue, the online agency promoting The Hulk. He points out that online journalists were allocated about 50 tickets to the UK premiere. A couple of years ago, they would have probably been lucky to have got in.
"Online media is right up there alongside other media," he says. "The beauty of online is that you can see so much. You can play a Hulk game and see an interview. How attractive is that?"
For certain key demographics, especially teenagers, Swanton argues that the influence of the web is crucial for promoting films, especially as it can bypass traditional film critics and influence film-goers before newspaper and magazine reviews appear.
But not all web editors agree. Rob Andrews, the entertainment editor for the ISP Tiscali, remains sceptical about the influence UK websites can exert. Although he sometimes gives a film a zero rating on the site, he says his approach is quite different from the likes of US-based independent film fans. "Harry Knowles is prepared to rip a film to bits if he doesn't like it. We want to work with the companies a bit more. We're a big ISP."
Andrews suggests that Hollywood deliberately picks rows with diehard comic book websites as PR ploys to generate advance attention for a film. "There is no story in saying that The Hulk is going to look exactly as he does in the comic books."
Whatever the sceptics say, online destinations such as OneRing already enjoy superhero-like influence over Hollywood and more could follow suit as sequels to films are regularly churned out. OneRing has quickly grown from being a small Tolkien specialist site to a business generating enough advertising to throw Oscar parties that the director of Lord of The Rings feels he must attend.
While it cannot afford to ignore such film sites as OneRing, which delivers big numbers, Hollywood is also spending time and money cultivating small specialist sites.
If you type The Hulk into Google, you can quickly see how many sites the monster film has spawned. They are often packed with gossip, reviews, interviews and merchandise. But the key question Hollywood would like to know is whether any of them will persuade you to go to see the shirt-splitting monster this summer?
Links for film fans
www.theonering.net
www.tiscali.co.uk
www.darkhorizons.com
www.aintitcoolnews.com
www.theonering.net