TikTok has become an important platform in 2020 for the music world. It’s helped push songs, such as Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” into mainstream popularity that were previously overlooked. Popular dances like the Renegade Dance to K Camp’s “Lottery” were also created and popularized on the app. Using their exponential growth and popularity to make an effect outside of music, TikTiok users apparently teamed up with K-Pop fans to ensure that Donald Trump set expectations for his rally in Tulsa far beyond what actually happened on Saturday night.
Prior to the rally, Trump promised a full house and overflowing crowd to Tulsa’s Bank of Oklahoma Center, however, the goal was missed by a longshot and it seems an online campaign was informally put together to bombard Trump’s campaign arm with ticket requests was at least partially to blame. Brad Parscale, chair of Trump’s re-election campaign, reported there were more than a million ticket requests, but reporters at the rally reported that attendance was far below the expected number. It turns out that when the Trump campaign posted a tweet asking supporters to register for the rally, TikTok and K-Pop fans reportedly shared the registration link with their followers with the intention of signing up and not attending the rally.
@proloser12245 It would be a shame if people knew reserving seats at a trump rally were free #greenscreen #dumptrump #notbiden2020 #anyfunctioningadult2020
To say the least, the plan worked. The attendance goal for the Trump rally was missed by a large amount, to the point that the campaign was forced to cancel an outdoor rally they had planned for the overflow of attendees they anticipated. “Oh no, I signed up for a Trump rally, and I can’t go,” one woman said sarcastically in one of the many TikToks that graced that app promoting the fake-registration to the Trump rally. According to New York Times, thousands of users posted similar tweets and videos that, in total, racked up millions of views.
There were other factors in the low attendance numbers, including a curfew the city of Tulsa had put in place in an attempt to limit counter protesters outside the venue. There is also the threat of COVID-19, as the still-ongoing pandemic is highly contagious and could spread at events held inside like Trump’s rally. But with the event being compared by some to Fyre Festival, it’s clear Saturday night went far different than Trump and his campaign hoped.
During the current worldwide pandemic, movie studios are no longer providing box-office figures because theaters have been shut down around the nation and the world. Because we are less interested in the actual figures themselves and more interested in what people are watching over the weekends, each week we will dive into Most Streamed and Bestseller Lists on Fandango, iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu to pinpoint the weekend’s most watched films.
Movie theaters around the country are starting to re-open, but there still hasn’t been much by way of new movies being released theatrically, although last weekend, Unsubscribe, a 29-minute horror movie shot entirely on video-conferencing app Zoom, managed to top the conventional box office with a $25,000 haul, knocking Wretched — which had been the number one film for several weeks, based on drive-in theater grosses — off the top spot.
During the pandemic, several studios have decided to skip theaters and release their films straight to VOD. It’s been a success for family films like Scoob! and Trolls World Tour and appears to have been a success for Judd Apatow’s Pete Davidson film, King of Staten Island, which holds the top spot again this weekend on Fandango’s VOD chart, iTunes, and Amazon. Unfortunately, we still don’t have actual figures, but it appears to be shaping up as a big success for Universal.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has been good for some films that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten much attention. Take for instance, Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried’s You Should Have Left. The Blumhouse Pic was also expected to be released into theaters, but I don’t think there was a huge appetite for it there. In any other time, Universal’s decision to release it digitally would have looked like they were “dumping it,” but during a pandemic, it’s the second most popular new film on both Fandango and iTunes this weekend, even with a $20 rental fee. The film is getting only mixed reviews (46 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but home moviegoers are clearly starved for new entertainment right now.
It’s clear how starved moviegoers are because, beyond King of Staten Island and You Should Have Left, it’s the usual array of films among the top digital rentals: The Invisible Man, The Hunt, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. Nicole Beharie’s new release, Miss Juneteenth (99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes!), seems to be doing okay, as well.
There are also some fascinating old movies bubbling up right now on iTunes: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando, Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai, Twister, and even Ryan Reynolds’ horrible film, R.I.P.D., is ranking, too. It’s weird what we turn to for comfort.
Disney+ and HBO Max do not offer charts, but it’s fair to say that the disastrous Artemis Fowl is doing well on Disney, and that the most Dad movie of the last year Ford vs. Ferrari, is doing well on HBO Max, where it was released for Father’s Day.
Meanwhile, over on Netflix, the top five is a strange assortment of films. The top film this weekend is a movie that’s been hanging around in the top five for a couple of weeks, 365 Days (365 Dni), the Polish erotic drama that apparently makes 50 Shades of Grey look tame by comparison. While the top film is Polish, the number two film is the French film, The Lost Bullet, which has no reviews on RT and very little information from which to glean its plot. I have no clue how it managed to rise to number two. Number three is the Netflix original, Feel the Beat, a dance film starring Sofia Carson, which looks cute but insubstantial. Magnetic, a 2018 documentary film about what appears to be extreme surfing is the fourth most popular film of the weekend, followed by the 2014 family film, The Nut Job. Meanwhile, last week’s top film, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, has fallen to number six.
Next weekend sees the VOD release of Jon Stewart’s Irresistible, starring Rose Byrne and Steve Carell, and on Netflix, Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams’ Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.
An embroidery kit, blue-light glasses, and more items that look way more expensive than their price tag.
