Eli Roth’s latest movie, The Green Inferno, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in the Midnight Madness section, sets a new precedent in cinema. In the film’s closing credits, Roth listed the actors’ Twitter handles along with their names. Discussing his goal to encourage fans to reach out to his cast, Roth hinted about plans for his next step in the horror community.
“Me and Jack Davis over there have been secretly working on an app for the entire horror community,” Roth said in a small roundtable interview. “We haven’t leaked any details of it because it’s not ready and we didn’t want to leak it until it’s ready go. Almost ready but it’s getting there, but there is a way to call all the fans, as many fans as you can, on your phone with an app. Right now it’s divergent in lots of different [social media] but that’s the next place I see it going. There will be one app that everyone has on their phone that gives you that horror fix.”
In the meantime, you can look for the cast of The Green Inferno on Twitter. Roth agrees his credits should set the precedent. “I think it should,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t do that. You’re crazy not to. We now live in a world where Twitter power is exceedingly important and it’s not going away. It’s not like MySpace. It doesn’t seem to be a fad site. Right now it is a way for fans to communicate with celebrities and everybody likes it because it’s short, it’s easy, it’s digestible and it’s fun. It’s like getting a text message from your favorite celebrity. I’ve watched a movie and afterwards there’s a feeling that I’d love to find that person or contact that person and tell them how great they were. How can I do that? So people go home and look it up on Twitter. Maybe they have a Twitter handle, maybe you tweet at the movie, maybe it makes it to them. I think it’s incredibly satisfying for a fan who’s watching it and I know it will happen. People watch it rolling up the screen, they’ll screen cap it and go tweet them. Or they’re watching it on DVD or VOD and they’ll pause it as soon as the movie’s over and they’ll tweet everyone right there.”
After his premiere, Roth has already heard feedback from other film teams at TIFF. “I can tell you last night already, other movies are like, ‘Why the fuck didn’t we think of that?’ I think actors are going to have it in their contracts. I don’t know if people will do it in the front credits because that seems a little bit too much but we thought for the end credits, this is who made the movie and you want to tell them how great they were, there you go.”
Check back with CraveOnline for our upcoming review of The Green Inferno and interview with star Lorenza Izzo.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
