The Hollywood Reporter looks at the studios’ increasing efforts to cultivate hardcore fans for tentpole releases, and questions the ROI of placing so much emphasis on an “influential” niche.  It’s a solid look at the challenges of properly weighting a campaign, but I reject the notion that “reaching them in the right ways [may be] so elusive and inefficient that it’s not even worth trying”.

If you can’t efficiently appeal to your base, then you’re missing the point — they want to be a part of the process, so simply enable and empower them to do so from the beginning.  The central issue herein is that fanboys alone cannot significantly move the needle for big-budget, mass entertainment; which begs the question: why not endeavor to find efficiency in the production and distribution of entertainment made specifically for such audiences?  Oh wait.