I'm going to quickly touch on the most controversial subject right now in the entertainment world. It's not racism, sexism, drugs, violence or Ebola. I'm going to discuss spoilers. The fact that this blog post is being made while I'm on a closed set is even considered quite taboo. Spoiler alert! You've been warned.
I'm sure you've all heard the stories of scripts being leaked, photos secretly taken, or off-the-record interviews pulling back the curtain for major entertainment events. For most people in the entertainment industry spoilers are everywhere. You can't swing a dead cat without walking into endings, locations, or the death of major characters. With millions of dollars riding on the success or failure of a film or TV series, you'd think that keeping everything under wraps and veiled in secrecy would be priority #1 for a production. The truth behind the glitz and glamour is that it's not. Confidentiality agreemets filled with legally binding contracts, closed sets, and scrips held with iron fists are nearly an afterthought. Like an evil super-villain you could easily destroy the world and lives of fans if you wanted to. Or could you?
Nope. Why not? The reason is quite obvious. People don't like their entertainment spoiled. This information is actually unwanted so people will generally try to avoid it. How often have you applied earmuffs when your friends discuss last nights episode of your favorite TV show before you've seen it? There isn't a market for this information. No one can really profit off of it. So just like ol' big business, if there is a low demand then there is generally little supply.
There is a real fear that if this information got out it could really ruin it for everyone. Interestingly enough this actually isn't the case. The protection of spoilers is actually counter productive to what drives the entertainment business. This is partly because the biz is driven by buzz and hype. If people see a spoiler and it creates any interest it actually does lip service to project. It's the bad news is good publicity concept. J.J. Abrams played upon this recently with the many twitter post surrounding the release of the latest Star Wars film. Anything about the film released anywhere could be considered a spoiler. He not-so-accidentally released teaser images, props, locations etc. creating his own spoilers. It was genius marketing and sent the internet in a frenzy wanting more. Rest assured, there will always be many more things about the project that will entertain us.
Consider your favorite films or TV shows of all time. Do you still love them? Even though you know Darth Vader is Luke's father does it devalue it? Knowing Bruce Willis was dead all along does it really ruin the ending? Was the last episode of LOST what made you love the series through 6 seasons? We get much more joy and entertainment from the other parts, Spoilers will never cause a film, television show, or book, comic book, etc. to fail. I hope spoilers never stop us from loving them.
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