Blumhouse and Meta want you to chat with M3GAN. We’d prefer you didn’t.
Horror specialists Blumhouse have teamed up with social media giant Meta to bring the “second screen” experience to theatres.
As announced in a recent press release, US punters who catch M3GAN at Blumhouse‘s second Halfway to Halloween screenings will have the option of engaging with a M3GAN chatbot. Using Meta‘s new Movie Mate technology, audiences will be able to natter on with M3GAN, accessing exclusive trivia and behind the scenes info.
Obviously, this means pulling out your phone in a cinema, which we, personally, frown upon.
But not Meta‘s Omar Zayat.”The M3GAN in-theatre Movie Mate is a first-to-market moviegoer experience,” the group lead in entertainment, tech, travel & gaming, and auto said. “We are happy to introduce filmgoers to it by way of Instagram Direct and Click-to-Messenger Ads.”
Rightio. Sounds like hell to us.
Now, at first taste, this doesn’t seem like a big deal. It’s for a one off event, and for a movie released in 2022. Halfway to Halloween takes place in the cinemas across the US, with M3GAN screening on April 30. It’ll be followed by Annabelle on May 7 and Ma on May 14. And in that context – or in the comfort of your own home – that sounds like fun.
But this is obviously testing the waters. The notion of encountering this sort of thing out in the wild chills the blood. The theatrical experience is already a roll of the dice when it comes to audience behaviour. This Movie Mate malarkey actively encourages being a douche to your fellow audience members.
This whole “second screen” thing is getting a bit out of hand, tbh. If you’re not across it, “second screen” refers, obviously enough, to watching something on one screen while doing something else on another. Typically that means binging a series while doomscrolling social media, and really: whomst amongst us?
But things get thorny when the phenomenon leads to Netflix requesting scripts get dumbed down to accommodate distracted viewers, as has been reported elsewhere. Of course, there’s a chance that’s a storm in teacup, but boy, the very idea rankles, doesn’t it?
Still, the odds of getting through a cinema outing these days without some yutz hauling out their phone are slim to none. Even that behaviour is tacitly encouraged. Official social media accounts have frequently shared illicit footage of screenings taken by fans, which is technically illegal but obviously being factored into marketing plans. It seems like the electronic genie’s out of the bottle.
Ah, well.
On the bright side, M3GAN 2.0, Blumhouse‘s hotly-anticipated sequel to the killer doll hit, is out on June 26. We’re looking forward to that. Assuming phones are cloaked at the critics’ screening, that is.
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