Chapter 211 - Test Screening (1) (1/2)
The movie, titled ”2050”, was a science fiction film set in the future where many androids (artificial humans) live among ordinary people. Jean acted as an android who work as a police officer to serve the community.
Chaos occurred when a criminal who controlled the time machine managed to escape into the past. Jean's character and his colleague went after the criminal, but they were trapped in the past and must find a way to go home while trying to survive in an era that was foreign to them. As artificial human beings, they were almost captured by government agents for research in the laboratory.
For the promotion of this new movie, producers held limited screening in selected cities to see the audience's response. Usually, from the test audience's response, they could develop a strategy for the launch of the movie.
Sometimes, the ending of a film could be re-edited and changed if the audience response was bad or if the audience didn't like a certain aspect of the movie. It had happened that even a movie could be re-edited even though it had been shown in public theaters widely.
For example, in ”The Program” movie, the main actor was lying on the highway and was not hit by a single car. Then, his friends followed suit as a form of solidarity. This scene was supposed to have a deep social meaning, but eventually it had to be edited and removed from the movie even though it was already aired widely. The reason was because many teenagers were imitating this scene on the highway and someone was killed by a car.
The ”ET: The Extra Terrestrial” movie, produced by Steven Spielberg, also experienced re-editing after the screening test. The ET character was supposed to die at the end of the story and brought back to their planet.
However, the screening test audience protested because the story was too sad and requested that the ending be changed. Finally, in the final ET movie which was then screened in public theaters, the ET figure stayed alive.
Something similar was done to the best-selling movie ”Pretty Woman”, starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. In the original ending, Richard Gere's character left the character played by Julia Roberts because the movie was meant have a dark ending. But, the test audience rejected the ending outright and demanded that the two characters unite and get married.
They finally changed the ending of the movie Pretty Woman to follow the wishes of the test audience and it was proven to be a huge success.
Finland and her two female friends from LTX were very excited to watch Jean's new movie and gave their input. Caspar, who was not too fond of fantasy movies, offered to stay at home to take care of Aleksis while Finland had fun with Anne and Lucia.
Ben drove Finland to downtown San Francisco and picked up her two girlfriends from LTX office. They held the invitation they received from Jean to show at the entrance tightly in their hands.
When Ben and Finland arrived with the limousine in front of the LTX International office building, Anne and Lucia froze and could barely breathe. This was too shocking for them.