There was a time, not long ago, when Sonic the Hedgehog seemed doomed to fail. The film’s first trailer, released last April, was roundly mocked for its creepy rendering of the titular character; why, why, why did he have such big, humanoid teeth? It’s hard to remember another film preview that caused that much of a stir—at least until the first peek at Cats introduced us all to the horrors of digital fur technology a few months later.

But unlike Cats director Tom Hooper, Sonic’s creators decided to listen to their critics. Paramount postponed and re-edited the movie due to the internet backlash, pushing it from its original November 8, 2019 release to February 14, 2020. And incredibly enough, the gambit paid off. Sonic was the number-one movie at the worldwide box office this weekend, grossing a whopping $113 million, $70 million of which came from domestic audiences. It’s a major turnaround for a film that was initially poised to be one of the more embarrassing releases of the year—and evidence that, at least sometimes, responding to passionate fan feedback after a film’s been largely completed can wind up paying off.

“Studios are listening to the audience [now], which I think is a really smart thing,” said box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian. They’re also getting what amounts to free market research, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social channels—networks that allow audiences to make their voices heard more clearly than ever, enabling a traditionally slow-moving industry to respond to concerns in something akin to real time.

Of course, sometimes those responses can be too little, too late. Birds of Prey, the Suicide Squad spin-off starring Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, opened February 7, earning $33.25 million domestically—a number that’s either disappointing or perfectly fine, depending on who’s interpreting it. Regardless, both camps might agree on one thing: The film probably might have made more money if Harley Quinn’s name had been in the title.

Evidently, Warner Bros. agreed. The studio reportedly attempted to retcon this SEO issue the week after the movie opened by encouraging major theater chains AMC and Regal to tweak the film’s online listing to read Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey—a very unusual move for a big release after it’s already arrived in theaters, though when reached for comment, W.B. told V.F. that the film’s title is still, officially, Birds of Prey. (Changing something as major as a title after a movie has opened would be complicated and expensive, as Dergarabedian pointed out: “It’s in all the marketing materials, all the one-sheets, all the posters—it’s everywhere.”)

Hooper tried a sort of similar retcon trick when Cats finally opened in December, after months of merciless internet roasting. The jeers grew even louder when eagle-eyed fans realized that one scene of the finished film had not transformed Judi Dench’s human hand into a cat’s paw. Universal resorted to digitally altering and rereleasing the film with “improved visual effects”—typically unheard of for a completed film.

Alas, the re-pawing was not enough to save Cats from flopping at the box office, getting shredded by critics, and potentially putting Hooper in director’s jail. Birds of Prey, meanwhile, trucked along in its second weekend, bringing its worldwide cume up to $145 million. It dropped 48% in its second outing, which is neither disastrous nor an upswing; by comparison, Suicide Squad, a critical bomb but a big box office hit, dropped 67% in its second weekend, while Avengers: Endgame, the biggest superhero movie of 2019, dropped 59%.