Last week, I received an email notifying me that the Twitter account for the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man started following my Twitter account. (When I announce that I'm listening to a song off of Hall & Oates' Big Bang Boom album, I take comfort knowing that The Amazing Spider-Man will have this information. Yes, I am bragging. What of it?) This got me to thinking, I should really turn off that automated email notification. It also got me to thinking, What happens to these types of Twitter accounts after the movie comes out?
By 2010, studios were regularly using Twitter to promote their films. The other nice thing about 2010 is that it gives enough distance to get an accurate look at what happens to these accounts. So, I went through every single wide-release of 2010 and made an honest attempt to find each and every one of the Twitter accounts associated with each film. (Some films didn't have Twitter accounts; some that I found were on the questionable side of legitimate.) Of the accounts that I found, here is how each of them died.
This one is strange. On March 22, 2010, its presumable farewell tweet was something about an online game that promoted the film. Well, that was until two years later, when just ten days ago it wished us a happy St. Patrick's Day.
Then, inexplicably, it sent eight replies to another Twitter user that it seemed very eager to chat with.
At least for now, Bounty Hunter lives.
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Hot Tub Time Machine hasn't tweeted since March 28, 2010, when it offered us the chance to win a free hot tub.
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Letters to Juliet
On Feb 27, 2011, the director of Letters to Juliet, Gary Winick, passed away. The next day, after not tweeting for over a year, the Twitter account for Letters to Juliet tweeted a photo of Amanda Seyfried and the late director.
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MacGruber star Will Forte was the one writing these tweets. On the Sunday of its release, the MacGruber account (a.k.a. Forte) tweeted that the film "shit the bed."
A year later, the account posted one lone Tweet asking how to, well, lower the temperature of one's penis. Since then, the account has been silent.
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On Nov. 24, 2010, three lucky people won a Sex in the City 2 Blu-ray combo pack, then it wished us a "Happy Thanksgiving." There are 12,288 people still waiting for that next tweet.
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The last 19 tweets from the Get Him to the Greek account are the same two messages put on auto replay. If you go back even further, the trend seems to continue with other messages. I would document these in more detail, but you stopped reading this paragraph after the first four words.
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"If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team." Or download the A-Team game for your mobile phone, as the last message tells us before the team went back underground on June 18, 2010.
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On Oct. 22, 2010, the Twitter feed from The Karate Kid informed us of a new Facebook pinball game. There are 22,093 (!) followers still waiting for that next update.
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After a ten month hiatus, Knight and Day wanted us to check out the trailer for another Fox movie, In Time. Thankfully, even Knight and Day spared us a link to the trailer for This Means War.
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Grown Ups' last Tweet is a plea to vote for that film in the MTV Movie Awards category "Best Line From A Movie." (For those who must know, yes, the line, "I want to get chocolate wasted," did win -- beating lines from The Social Network and Inception, naturally.)
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The Other Guys went out with one last link to a clip.
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"Watch Piranha director Alexandre Aja discuss one of his stars, Steven R. McQueen!" I haven't watched this clip, but whatever Aja had to say caused a studio intern to give up on this Twitter account forever.
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After a ten month hiatus, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps wanted us to check out the trailer for another Fox movie, In Time. Thankfully, even Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps spared us a link to the trailer for This Means War.
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Congratulations, Rebecca Thompson. Or, better known to us as @GingerEcstasy. Your simple inquiry about the UK availability of The Social Network in iTunes resulted in the account never posting again.
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As of Feb. 6, this account is still tweeting. Its last being a happy birthday wish to Bob Marley. It's unknown if Marley saw this tweet considering that Marley died 25 years before Twitter was invented.
Happy Birthday Bob #Marley
— Jackass 3D- 4? (@3DJACKASS) February 6, 2012
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Saw 3D tweeted a grand total of two times in its short but memorable life. Once to tell us that the film was originally known as Saw VII and another time to give us the release date -- only two days before the release. (Thanks for the notice, Saw 3D.) There are still 251 lost souls who still follow this account. I'd like to talk to every single one of them.
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127 Hours
In recent weeks, the 127 Hours Twitter account has been tweeting links to the Prometheus trailer -- which is basically what every account in my Twitter feed has been doing, too.
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Love and Other Drugs wanted us to check out the trailer for another Fox movie, In Time. Thankfully, even Love and Other Drugs spared us a link to the trailer for This Means War.
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Burlesque
On Feb. 16, 2011, the Burlesque Twitter feed asked the world this little brain-teaser:
Today, there are 21,314 people still waiting for that answer.
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More than anything, I'm just amazed that there are 3,485 people in the world who at some point thought to themselves "Yeah, why not? I'll follow The Tourist on Twitter."
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I suppose that it's nice to go out on some sort of high note.
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After a seven month hiatus, Gulliver's Travels wanted us to check out the trailer for another Fox movie, In Time. Thankfully, even Gulliver's Travels spared us a link to the trailer for This Means War.
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Mike Ryan is senior entertainment writer for The Huffington Post. He has written for Wired Magazine, VanityFair.com and GQ.com. He likes Star Wars a lot. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter