A gazillion words were blogged about Snakes on a Plane before the first frame ever unspooled. Yes, the Internet hype seemed to be off the charts – and so were some of the predictions for the film's opening weekend. The herd mentality was at work. Then Samuel "MF" Jackson hit the screen and the snakes didn’t live up to the hype. The film was a loser – if you listened to the herd mentality. Interesting how the democratization of communication works.

Self-proclaimed industry ad-monkey, Mack Simpson, was one of the more vocal critics decrying the in-flight disaster as a virtual circle-jerk. (I guess Mack can call himself anything he wishes, since he was one of the earliest bloggers in the ad-world.)

SoaP opened with $15.2 (including the Thursday night screenings which are usually not counted as part of the opening weekend take; without the added bump the number would have been $14.3). The usually reliable BoxOfficeMojo.com predicted a $24 million opening – off by a tidy 40%.

Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert > I predicted a $14m opening weekend with a cum of $25m for the run. (Okay, so I’ll be a little low on the cum. Sue me.) It seemed rather obvious given the track record for R-rated films and the clues laying around the Internet on the size of the fan base. (I’ll share the math with you some time if you really want to know.)

The point here, however, is not that I’m great at reading tea leaves (I’m not). The point is that the MF snakes film was a success! The herd mentality had fun with the film – and that’s the way it should be. Hey – it’s entertainment, right? But, once the numbers came out, the herd mentality ran toward the opposite cliff like a bunch of lemmings (sorry for the confused metaphor).

Here’s the simple reason why the film was a success. The average R-rated studio film generates something in the ballpark of $25m in domestic box office. (Last year all R-rated films released in the theater, studio and indie, earned a paltry $12m each.) The cost to market a film is in the $40m neighborhood.

With Snakes, New Line spent approximately $5m to market the film. They didn’t support the movie with a large TV ad push or cross promotion (no Tommy Bahama snakeskin watch bands with Jackson’s picture on the watch). The film will earn at least as much as the average R-rate studio film, but without the added overhead of $25m in advertising (for this type of film the studio would likely not have spent the average of $40m).

In other words, what was the value of those millions of words spewed by bloggers and their readers? Easy math: Studio ad support could reasonably have been $25m. They only spent $5m. The difference is $20m. And they still pulled in a box office that was on par with most R-rated studio films. The bloggers carried the studio water to the tune of $20m.

I’ll go one step further. I believe that New Line (and parent WB) intentionally did not spend huge to support the giant net-buzz. That would have been the smart play -- but these guys (and gals) are also very smart. Instead, they wanted to see what the value of the Internet play was. So, they intentionally did not spend big bucks on the ad attack. This movie will be very profitable for New Line when the foreign box office and ancillary markets are added to the snakes bank account. New Line is very happy with the SoaP box office, which seemed to closely match the tracking numbers (but “tracking numbers” are a whole different discussion).

You can be sure that Hollywood is looking closely at the SoaP results and analyzing how the Internet world can impact the billions spent on film and music marketing. In the meantime, rest assured that the herd mentality is alive and well at a blog near you.

Note: For an interesting look at the marketing lessons learned from the SoaP experience, check out this item from Ben and Jackie – two very savy ad people.