Making global audiences for a Hollywood ‘blockbuster’ feature film: Marketability, playability and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Abstract

This article interprets two key concepts in movie marketing (marketability and play-ability) through an empirical examination of the effects of commercial interpellation of audiences for a Hollywood ‘blockbuster’ fantasy film, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). The article reports results of two online surveys of Hobbit audiences, one in November 2012 in the weeks preceding theatrical release, and one in February–June 2013 among post-viewing audiences, employing a mixed-methods approach that includes Q sorting and a questionnaire. We identify and describe five main pre-release and five main post-viewing audience groups, show-ing that the film had greater marketability than playability. Three of the pre-release audience groups expressed a high degree of anticipation to see the film, but only one post-viewing audience group expressed a high degree of enjoyment, while the others expressed various degrees of disappointment. We discuss the attributes of the film that most affected the film’s marketability and playability for each of the audience groups during the interpellation process from prefiguration to reception.