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Early Friday morning it looked like Sacha Baron Cohen had done it again with his new film Brüno. With post-midnight ticket sales in the neighborhood of $1.6 million some Hollywood insiders were predicting around $50 million for the opening weekend.



Well, $50 million didn't happen. Brüno finished the weekend with a respectable $30.4 million. But, $20 million is a pretty big gap... what caused such an erroneous projection? Well, TIME thinks Twitter is to blame.

Did Twitter cost Brüno millions? Tell us what you think.

"Brüno's box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film's brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers — and that their tut-tutting got around fast. Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect."

With techsavvy moviegoers tweeting their opinions to literally millions of followers, the micro-blogging site can make or break a film in one day.

Days after the movie was released, Brüno is still a trending topic on Twitter. Users can't seem to stop tweeting about the film. Sure, some of the tweets are positive saying how funny the film is... while others are incredibly harsh and could have contributed to the Twitter effect that was mentioned above...







It's hard to say if Twitter cost Brüno millions at the box office. The film had already been under fire from The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) so it's unclear how much impact Twitter actually had.

But, in any case this is a new trend we're sure to keep an eye on.

Do you think Twitter can have a negative impact on the box office? Tell us.