THE DARK KNIGHT RISES vs. THE HOBBIT: Who Won the Twitter Buzz?

Once all three trailer were released the twitter buzz ignited for all three films. The London PR agency Way To Blue has tracked the online buzz. They have counted up the overall tweets for each movie, the tweets regarding the directors, and tweets involving key characters in each film.

The results are very surprising as the winner for overall twitter buzz last month goes to ... THE HOBBIT! According to Way to Blue The Dark Knight Rises was thumped by almost twice as many tweets for Peter Jackson's return to Middle-Earth. In fact the Next Batman film didn't even finish in the top spot for the other two categories: director tweets and character tweets.

The Hobbit is certainly one of the largest responses we have seen from a film property online in the social media era. Comparing the levels of buzz upon trailer launch The Hobbit has reached almost double the levels of noise on Twitter than The Dark Knight Rises. Clearly the core audience for the Tolkien franchise have waited a long time to replenish their large appetites but we are surprised by the differential in Twitter volume from The Dark Knight Rises (which is no slouch either!). Prometheus definitely lacks the overt franchise link in the way these other properties do and it has to work a lot harder given its tenuous reported association. It’s still a strong performance no matter.

The Alien connection to Prometheus was made by around 1 in 5 tweeters to make it the top theme of all the trailers. Interestingly, the Space Jockey teaser generated the least of all buzz – it is a true fanboy observation, after all. Of the character buzz, Bane beats Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins. Relative to its overall buzz, thematically The Hobbit had fewer strong takeaways thematically.

Which director owns the franchise the most? Surprisingly for all the talk around Ridley Scott and Prometheus it is ‘Peter Jackson’s – The Hobbit’ that comes out on tops, warranting perhaps a film title change or a stronger poster mention for the New Zealander. This franchise undoubtedly belongs to Peter Jackson and imagine whether the conversation would still have been this high for him even if Guillermo Del Toro was directing!