Films made with Google searches in mind

Making the title or content of your film Google-search friendly does not always lead to box office gold. Here are some examples...

Sometimes, the title or casting of a movie seems to have been packaged perfectly with the Google search term in mind. But does this approach lead to box office gold? We’ve been finding out…

Jennifer’s Body

Keywords: Megan Fox, Lesbian, Naked, Cheerleader, Box office disaster

From the outside in, it looked as if Megan Fox had played a blinder in choosing her first major movie headline role. Granted, she’s already shot to superstardom, and Michael Bay’s camera certainly enjoyed giving her career extra exposure in Transformers 2, but this was a chance to see if she could carry a movie off her own name.

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She couldn’t, but dammit, she played the Google search term game bloody well.

Megan Fox + cheerleader outfit + girls kissing + vampires and stuff should have equalled some form of box office success. But the Google keyword game doesn’t seem, as we’re going to be finding out a whole lot more, to lead to pots of gold. The film, thus, bombed. That said, we still expect Jennifer’s Body to clean up on DVD, and Megan Fox will be jumping aboard Transformers 3 in due course, much to the delight of Michael Bay’s director of photography.

Sorority Row

Keywords: Lingerie, spending entire film in lingerie, some naked ladies, bit of a horror film thrown in, Bruce Willis’ daughter, underwear, “you’ll catch your death if you go out in those”, “I Know What You Did Last Summer knock-off”

Clothes appear to be a luxury in the world of the modern Sorority Row. I can’t confess to having seen this one, but from the trailer and reports from colleagues of mine, it appears to be getting young actresses to strip down to their underwear and have a go at banging out a pseudo-sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In a film where clothes seem to be at a premium, the advertising thus hammered this point home. There was barely a bit of outerwear to be seen in the trailer, and it made it very clear that if you wanted to see women in their undies, this was the ticket to buy.

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Sadly, it seems that the Google target audience contented themselves with the trailer and other assorted images that they may have found online without having to leave their seats. Women in their smalls, clearly, can help sell a film, but not when it’s sold as the be all and end all of a movie. Playing with the image filters in Google Image Search can reap plenty of material there, after all.

Alien vs Predator

Keywords: alien, predator, “films that Paul W S Anderson fecked up”, Alien+predator NOT “anything good”

People search for Aliens! People search for Predators! They search for the memory of those amazing videogames that brought them back together!

Surely, therefore, mashing together such search-friendly icons into one package is a work of keyword genius! All you need then is a half-decent film to draw them together and you have sequels until the end of time!Er…

The Expendables and/or Machete

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Keywords: Nearly every action star you can think of from the past two decades, blowing shit up, action, guns, violence, KABOOM!

Both Machete and The Expendables are lining up to tackle the Google keyword movie making challenge next, given that they’ve roped in pretty much every action star of note from the past couple of decades.

It’s a game of cover your bases, as Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, Jet Li, The Statham, Seagal, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lungdren and plenty more are set to line up on screen. Mind you, if you search for Van Damme instead then the makers of both films will be out of luck.

We won’t find out if either film hits the target for a year or so yet sadly, but sooner or later some film maker is going to hit Google gold, and we can’t help wishing that it’s one of these two to do it.

Lesbian Vampire Killers

Keywords: Lesbian, vampire, killers, -anything funny at all

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Let’s be charitable and suggest that Lesbian Vampire Killers isn’t a great movie. Its title? The very epitome of naming a movie for the Google generation. It’s got the home market covered too, particularly electronic programme guides on the likes of Sky and TiVo. After all, consider that there’s generally never enough room to squeeze the full title of what’s on in the space provided on-screen.

As such, Lesbian Vampire Killers isn’t just a Google keyword title, it’s got the words listed in order of priority too. It didn’t help it make much of a dent at the box office, though, although the title does little harm to its long term chances on TV and DVD.

Showgirls

Keywords: Sex, more sex, naked ladies, sex, some sex, nudity, sex, -actingtalent

Okay, we’re cheating. Google wasn’t around when Showgirls was released. But it was arguably the forerunner to the trend of making material Internet friendly.

For in the run-up to the release of Showgirls, much was made of the fact that the website to Paul Verhoeven’s film was attracting gigantic amounts of traffic. Sadly, this was in the mid 1990s, when lots of Internet traffic was a trickle by today’s standards, about the equivalent of lots of people walking to the corner shop at once to buy the same jazz mag.

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It also said more about the web’s burgeoning role in fulfilling people’s pornographic needs – this was, basically, a high profile film sold heavily on sex – than the desire of anyone to check out screening times.

Ultimately, Showgirls flopped (so to speak), although it’s won a fresh audience in the cult movie market. We’d also argue that it’s a much better film than Basic Instinct, but perhaps that’s a chat for another time…

Whip It

Keywords: Whips, whipping, Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, “what do you mean it’s about rollerskating?”

Ah, the majesty of the potentially misleading title. Think Whip It, and we’d wager that many won’t instantly be getting visions of a surprisingly strong directorial debut for Drew Barrymore, with Ellen Page starring in her film about a roller derby league.

We might be going out on a limb here, but some may, instead, choose to go with an alternative version of “whip it” as their preferred search result. The film, to be fair, is supposed to be genuinely impressive, but Googlers who happened across it by accident might not, er, be getting quite what they expect…

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An Inconvenient Truth

Keywords: Powerpoint, how to make a successful Powerpoint presentation

Sorry…

Zack & Miri Make A Porno

Keywords: porno, porno movie, amateur porno, -“seth rogen’s naked backside”

It was six words that reportedly sold Harvey Weinstein on the idea of making Zack & Miri Make A Porno with writer/director Kevin Smith, and all six of them are in the title. But once more, a title that seems to tick the necessary keyword boxes failed to translate into solid box office.

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The film turned in a profit, but the fact that it topped out at around $40m worldwide is still something of a mystery to us. Heck, the MPAA even went to the trouble of giving it lots of publicity with an NC-17 certificate in the States, before it was trimmed back to an R.

Personally, this writer liked it a lot, but even if you didn’t, there are far worse comedies that have gone on to make a lot more cash. Seth Rogen and porn don’t seem to mix, appears to be the moral of the story.

Add your own suggestions in the comments. And feel free to tell us off for including Showgirls, too!