If you’re social media inclined, then you may see ahead of the release of big movies a conversation going on as to when the “review embargo” is going to lift. Furthermore, the timing of a review embargo then has a habit of being translated into an audit of how confident a studio is in a particular production.
The basics
A review embargo is, at heart, what you likely to suspect it to be. In return for seeing a film early, so that you can assemble your thoughts and get your review and features ready in time, you have to sign a piece of paper promising not to run your coverage until an agreed date and time. This is generally something that helps both the reviewer and the film company. Around the release of the last James Bond film, Spectre, there was no embargo in place after the first press screening. It took place in Leicester Square, and immediately after the film finishing, you could see film reviewers bashing out their words on a laptop on benches. There’s still a traffic benefit in being the first review out there, and in the case of Spectre, the film finished around an hour before national press reviewers had to file their copy for the morning papers. Embargoes aren’t unique to film. They work increasingly across technology, videogames, cars, theatre, and more. In the case of videogames, more and more outlets have given up trying to get a review together in time for an embargo lifting, as the physical impossibility of playing through a game in the short window they’re afforded makes it a waste of time.
What does an embargo look like?
Sometimes it’s a form that requires you to pop in your name and the outlet you work for. For very early screenings, we’ve had to supply an embargo countersigned by two people, but generally, the norm is you put your own name and sign it on the spot. These forms are commonplace.
Are all embargoes created equal?
Lord no. Firstly, bizarrely, there’s still some distinction between an embargo for print outlets, and those that are online only. If you ever wonder why the website of a newspaper has printed a review that websites haven’t, it tends to be because they’ve got into an earlier, longer-lead screening by nature of print deadlines, and used that to score an early online review too. Don’t blame ‘em. Would do it myself if I could. Then there’s the trade press. It rarely happens now, but in past years, the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Screen International, and Variety – deemed the traditional ‘trade press’ – have been able to work to different embargo times. That gap appears to have been closed, though. But then there’s the social media embargo, and the full review embargo. I struggle to wrap my head around that. This tends to state that you can put ‘reactions’ but not a full review on social media early. But that you have to hold the full review back to an agreed date. Or: you can say what you think of the film in a few words, but not in many. It’s a clever trick for film studios to use, as they know they’ll then get two waves of reactions. The initial social media reaction tends to be more positive, with people Tweeting or Facebooking as they leave a screening. If you ever wonder why there’s a disparity between a reviewer’s social media response and their full review, it tends to be time letting things soak in.
Does a late embargo mean a film is bad?
No. But often yes. Film has changed a lot over the past five or six years in particular, and one by-product of the digital age is that final cuts are being locked down a lot closer to a release date. As such, there are times when publicists have little time to see the film, react to it, plan screenings (often globally), book screening rooms and such like. It can run things to the wire. Given that marketing departments tend to want star ratings for posters, and quotes too, that causes them hassle as well, even before they have to field umpteen phone calls from movie hacks wondering when a certain screening is, and why that person got in to see it and they didn’t. Against that, there’s A Good Day To Die Hard. Fox was in a quandary with this one. It presumably knew how bad the film was, but also wanted to avoid the ‘Fox refuses to press screen new Die Hard movie’ headlines. As such, the UK press screening took place at 9:30pm the night before the film’s release. The embargo lifted at midnight. The film ran for just over an hour and a half. The first shitty review off the back of that press screening landed slap bang on time. And yet, bizarrely, the strategy sort of worked. For a terrible movie, Die Hard 5, as nobody calls it, still grossed over $300 million worldwide. Had the review embargo lifted a week earlier, and word of how bad the film was spread? It’s not hard to see that the number – even appreciating in-built affection for Die Hard movies – would have likely been lower. More often than not now, a global embargo is enforced, that means wherever you are in the world, you’ll still be tied to the same minute as everyone else. But that can quickly change. When you leave an early screening, oftentimes, there’s an email waiting for you from a publicist asking for a few lines of reaction. This is, as a rule, so a publicity team can get a measure of the response the film in question is likely to get. Occasionally, if you like a film a lot, you then get asked if you can supply a star rating, and perhaps some lines that can be used for publicity. I’ve written about that before.
Are embargoes just for big movies?
No. But they tend to be of less use to a smaller, independent movie that’s looking for any oxygen of publicity it can get. Marvel, for instance, will set a global embargo and know that on that given day, its film will be the talk of the movie world as a consequence. In the case of 2015’s wonderful Pride, reviews started running a couple of months before. As such, it allowed sites such as this very organ to bang the drum for it as early as possible. Without a massive marketing budget, and against tough competition, it’s the kind of film that needed that kind of support.
Bottom line: are embargoes a good thing?
It depends, but personally I’d suggest we all win more than we lose. Conversely, I’ve seen the accusation from some people that it’s making a pact with the film company, and that everyone should just pay to see a film when it comes out, and not be beholden to a piece of paper. The flipside of that is reviews won’t be available in advance of films coming out, and that tends to be of less service to a reader at the end of it all. Personally, what I value about an embargo is the thinking time they usually afford. That it constrains the need to be first, the desire to get 800 words online and a star rating in double quick time. That, used properly, they tend to result in more thought out reviews. It’s still a lot better than my previous job, writing the news for a computer magazine. An embargoed press release arrived, that I wasn’t permitted to run until 12.01am on a given day. The revelation? They’d done a survey that said people spill drinks on computer keyboards. That, chums, was what the delete key was invented for.
