Attention, movie aficionados: stop browsing through hundreds of websites and forums to keep track of your favorite movies. Sit back, relax, and let MoviePilot bring a steaming plate of fresh news, hot off the press, about your favorite upcoming movies on a single, easy to follow page. Sounds great? Then read on.
If there’s one thing the Hollywood media does well it is to produce an absurdly enormous amount of news stories. And the major studios know this. Before every major release, the massive PR machinery works overtime to generate buzz about a movie. Every little thing: from the size of the mole on Leonardo DiCaprio’s chin, to the angular fall of Kate Beckinsale’s hair is scrutinized for a celebrity hungry audience. Keeping track of an exciting upcoming movie, therefore, often means wading through a swamp of news stories, rumors, websites and forums – not exactly a pleasant premise.
Enter: MoviePilot.
After you sign up for the site (Facebook is mandatory), you can create ‘subscriptions’ for upcoming movies. Creating a subscription will populate your profile page with the latest news stories about the movie as they are published. Think of it as ‘friending’ a movie and seeing all updates about it on your wall.
The home screen, with news about the movie
For example, the new Clint Eastwood movie, J. Edgar, sounds very promising. It has one of my favorite actors in the lead role (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a true legend behind the camera (Eastwood). So when MoviePilot asked me which upcoming movie I wanted to follow, I chose J. Edgar along with Mission Impossible IV: Ghost Protocol. Within seconds, MoviePilot populated my ‘news stream’ with the latest stories about the movies: a Hollywood Reporter story on Hoover’s homosexuality, a NYT article on Leonardo, and a Movieline story on MI4’s action sequences.
And it’s not just mainstream press either. MoviePilot mines stories from public Facebook posts, Twitter, blogs and forums – i.e. the entire internet itself. And since that can get overwhelming very quickly, you can control the volume of stories by selecting only ‘Featured’ or ‘All Stories’.
You can control the volume of news delivered to your stream with this little button
But Wait, There’s More!
MoviePilot’s focus is on movies right now, but the promise is a lot bigger: it will, in the near future, cover everything from comic books to TV shows. In other words: it wants to be your one stop shop for pop culture consumption.
'Topics' give a glimpse into the future direction of the site
You can get a taste of this through various ‘Topics’ you can follow, such as ‘Superheroes’, ‘Legendary Directors’, etc. Subscribing to any particular topic will populate your news stream with stories pertaining to that topic.
What’s impressive is the degree of relevancy. A few irrelevant, unrelated stories in the stream can ruin the experience entirely. That didn’t happen over my two days with the site. Impressive.
Little polls like this keep things interesting and engagement levels high
Besides news, there are also little user created polls that should keep you engaged. Updates are posted directly to Facebook by default though (you can change this), which isn’t entirely welcome.
A do have a few gripes with the site. Namely, the little floating ‘question box’ is somewhat annoying. Clicking on the ‘Yes/No’ button doesn’t produce anything, save another question. If Iclick on a button, I expect to be rewarded – that’s how we have all come to expect.
I couldn't quite fathom what this pesky little box was for. MoviePilot: if I click on a button, I need to be rewarded with at least some feedback.
Further, the site design is very, very bland and the colors, dull. It could use a bit spicing up.
MoviePilot is based out of Berlin and has some big plans for the future. In its own words (pulled from the FAQs),
“Think smart phones. Think focus groups. Think of a movie-loving community that shapes Hollywood itself.”
Ambitious? You bet. Impressive. Hell yes.
Twitter: @moviepilot
Also follow, Tobi Bauckhage, CEO and co-founder: @tbauckhage
