Are you looking for a place to become a fan of new and under construction film projects? Did you know there’s a very popular place for doing just that? Germany’s Moviepilot.de is place where people go to discover new films projects, get inside information about actors, and also get exclusive inside looks at what will soon be on the big screen. The site is extremely successful and receives 2 million unique visitors every month and has over 1.4 million Facebook fans.
CEO and co-founder Tobi Bauckhage explains his decision to test the same concept with an English version of the site in the United States:
“Based on the recommendations and based on this Facebook understanding, we said we had a chance from Berlin to create a new generation movie site that is concentrating on early fans, using the Social Graph and the Open Graph to learn about the fans, and kickstart recommendations based on that.”
His new project in the States is called Moviepilot.Com and features its own page on Facebook. In an effort to bring some capital to the investment the company hosted a series B funding round which produced over $7 million. That should get them started, and so far, the Facebook page alone has amassed about 4 million fans.
Key investors in the funding round include DFJ Esprit, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Venture, Grazia Equity and Creative Industries Berlin, all of which have funded the German version of the site in the past. Moviepilot.com already has deals underway with production studios like Twentieth Century Fox, who wants them to start on early promotion of the film, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer.
Bauckhage comments on the service he delivers to movie studios and fans:
“We’ve always thought the real power of tech is not the distribution but discovery, not even of films, but discovery of audiences,”
“Discovery and recommendation is still supply-driven, but we’re moving to a model where you have to learn about your audience and build audiences.”
If you’re a big movie fan, it might be worth checking out. It’s an interesting concept to think you can generate a lot of buzz around a movie that hasn’t even been made yet. It sounds like their off to a good start by partnering with Twentieth Century Fox.