March Portal Trend Snapshot
Here’s the latest buzz.
Oscar fever
The Academy Awards viewing figures were up this year (despite being down overall the last decade) and the ceremony has asserted itself as a cultural powerhouse, with our Portal filled from top to bottom with Oscar entries. But audiences’ priority focus may surprise you.
For example, Paul Giamatti didn’t take home a trophy, but he was a winner in terms of audience interest – rising 447%. Poor Things lost Best Picture to Oppenheimer, but it was the watercooler movie the next day, also climbing 447%. Add in chart wins for Annette Benning at 416%, and Greta Gerwig at 320%, and it appears winning the gold is not the only route to getting people talking about your movie.
‘Let them fight!’
The Godzilla franchise grabbed its first ever Oscar this week, with “Godzilla: Minus One” winning a VFX trophy. The 2014 take on the Big G included the iconic line ‘Let them fight’… which is our totally not tenuous way of revealing the fact that ‘Combat Sports’ also scored big in the Portal in March.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship rose by 113.05%, boxer Tyson Fury scored a knockout 207.78%, and Marlon Vera hung on in the chart when it was completely dominated by Oscar chatter – with an impressive 354% rise.
Photo finish?
Oscar winners are used to having their photos taken, and they’re also pretty accustomed to having those photos digitally manipulated.
But audiences are less accustomed to seeing pictures removed from the web because they’ve been edited by the Royal Family – with Kate Middleton’s self-proclaimed ‘amateur edits’ leading to an AP take-down notice of a family portrait shared online for Mother’s Day in the UK.
The event caused an explosion of interest in ‘Photograph manipulation’ chatter, which rose by a pretty incredible 240%. And there’s no manipulating our numbers!
The future is sci-fi
If Royals digitally transforming family photos all sounds like the stuff of science fiction, audiences have also been looking for some actual sci-fi escapism this week.
Dune 2 had an early March release, shattering box office expectations, and potentially leading people to discuss another epic science fiction sequel – talk around The Empire Strikes Back rose by 278%, with plenty of comparisons being made to Dune 2’s impact.
Add in an increase in interest for Star Trek: Discovery (season 3), and we could be seeing sci-fi sweep the Oscars next year – we’re going to place our next shipment of Spice that Dune 2 will bring home some gold in 2025.
