Online movie reviews are influencing how the global audience responds to a new movie. This in turn determines the box office performance of such movies, especially at the initial stages of release. This development has attracted the attention of many movie producers, who now consider online reviews as a crucial aspect of the movie industry.

With almost unrestricted access to the internet, there has been a significant increase in the rate of passing information around the world. Therefore, instead of having just a small group of critics who specialize in movie reviews, everyone who has access to the internet can now air their opinions freely about any digital content.

Movie reviews happen in stages, and each of these stages contributes to how viewers perceive a movie that they are yet to watch. The initial stage of review comes during the pre-release stage, where critics review a movie and make their opinions available to the public.

Critic Reviews vs Public Reviews

The outcomes of critic reviews can be perceived in different ways by the public. At this stage of review, it is normal to expect some bashing, and the pointing out of faults in a movie. Therefore, whenever the opposite happens, viewers become a bit suspicious of some foul play or inside job from the producers. There could be some suspicion that the movie owners may have influenced the opinions of critics when they are very positive.

On the other hand, a negative result from critic reviews could also create a level of curiosity among the public. Sometimes, this curiosity becomes the motivation for the public to check things out for themselves. There have been situations where movies that were negatively criticized turned out to become very successful after the public investigated and returned with a contrasting opinion from that of the critics.

Normally, after a movie has been fully released, the review by the general public is kick-started. Many people see this as a more robust kind of review due to a number of reasons:

The neutrality of the public who may not have any special interest in the movie.

The direct nature of the reviews, such as word of mouth marketing for the movie.

The size of the review pool, which forms a much larger community than that of the critics.

Whatever the situation, these online reviews are grabbing the attention of movie producers.

A famous scenario where public reviews turned around the initial fortune of a production after a not so great critic’s review is the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The movie earned almost $370 million in revenue, only after friends began talking to each other after watching it, and posting much more positive reviews online than what the critics had said earlier.

Apparently, as important as a critics review is, it will not be out of place to assume that public movie reviews play a much bigger role in determining how viewers receive a movie. Another example is the movie Shawshank Redemption, which took almost 20 years to achieve great success. Definitely as a result of online reviews.

An Incentivized Review System

The newly launched Blue Baikal platform now provides a focused review centre, where different classes of reviewers can play their roles and even get rewarded for doing so. For anyone in search of review results, the platform represents an ideal avenue, due to the attention that it is attracting, first as being new, and also as an incentivized platform.

On Blue Baikal, movie viewers have the opportunity to find new movies much quicker and review opportunities as well. Another interesting factor is that the blockchain-based platform is a transparent network that does not encourage manipulated reviews.

In overall terms, good or bad critic reviews will naturally affect the marketability of the movie. However, in the long run, the larger population of online reviewers have a bigger influence on box office performance. This is exactly why movie producers are paying more attention to online reviews. You can visit the Blue Baikal platform to find reviews of the latest movies and also participate in peer-to-peer crowdfunding.