Surprising fact of the day: Red Bull DID NOT pay for product placement in Snakes on a Plane.

First Box Office reports are in for Friday:

1. Snakes on a Plane - $6,130,000
2. Talladega Nights - $4,130,000
3. Accepted - $3,605,000
4. Step Up - $3,500,000

Snakes also made $1,400,000 on Thursday, which is not accounted for in the number above.

Unrelated: did anybody tape my appearance on the Today Show or CNBC? I’d like to see them.

My mom saw one of these a few days in Connecticut. They’ve also been spotted in Boston and a number of other places around the country. Snakes on a Plane on (or behind) a Plane:

I like how much bigger the banner is than the tiny plane that’s dragging it. They should have hired Monty Coles to fly these banners around.

Also, as the movie draws ever nearer, the media attention is increasing along with my hit counts.  That’s going to lead to the website occasionally giving a temporary error message or not properly displaying all the images on the page.  Simply reloading should resolve these issues.  Slow loading times I can’t do much about.

There are two different snake-skin products that have been filling my inbox lately. The first is the Snakes on a Plane iPod “skin” which has been on sale for a while now. I don’t have an iPod, so when I was sent one I stuck it on a friend’s:

The second is snakeskin bound books, for sale at AbesBooks, including this $17,000 masterpiece:

Snakes on a Plane has been rated 15 by the BBFC (the British version of the MPAA):

Snakes on a Plane is rated 15 for “strong language, sex and bloody violence”. A 15 rating over here is roughly equivalent to most of R-rated films these days.

Also the above linked site mentions that the British version of the film weighed in at 105 minutes, 13 seconds. Does somebody want to calculate the SPMs (Snakes per Minute) of this movie?

New Line solicited remixed versions of their commercials/trailers from Addictive TV, who are in to that sort of thing. It’s airing on MTV, but here’s a version for your own personal internet:

Addictive TV commercial remix

IGN has posted a lot of videos regarding the film, including a bunch of new clips that went live on August 7th as well as a lot of stuff from Comic-Con.

Also, G4 sent me a promo clip for Snakes on a Plane week, (which I may have missed already, sorry about being so slow) with interviews with Samuel L. Jackson, David Ellis, and some other stuff.

All previous Fan Videos.

Snakes on a Plane trounced all other competition as the most anticipated August release on IMDB.

An audio book of Snakes on a Plane is available for download, but it’s not free AND it’s chock full of DRM.  If you don’t mind paying and don’t mind subjecting your purchases to the whims of rights-holders, you can give it a shot. Once again, I was asked to accept a “security update” before I was allowed to listen to this, so I wasn’t particularly interested. You might be.

The audiobook apparently cast both DCLugi and the guys from Subatomic Warp to provide audio.  Does anybody care to provide a review?

MTV2 has the entire soundtrack available to listen to. It didn’t work right away with my browser, and I wasn’t interested in installing a required “security update” so that might just be me.

When Christa Faust, author of the novelization of Snakes on a Plane, last spoke with us, she indicated that she did not yet own any Snakes on a Plane shirts. I believe that both Damnation and Shelflife were kind enough to send her samples, and Christa sent in a picture of herself in Fiji wearing one of Damnation’s designs:

Also on the Christa Faust front, an annoyingly spread-out interview with her has been posted by Jason Boog at ThePublishingSpot in a series of posts: Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, and Question 4. I think there’s one more question coming, so check the comments for an updated link.

Since I still think that Christa gave us the best interview, and she was cool enough to send in a picture of herself wearing her new shirt, I’ll pimp her original writing one more time: Hoodtown.

I’ve set up a way for SoaP fans to SMS one another and to connect via cell (SMS) during the day of the premiere. Ever use Dodgeball? Kind of like that, but instead of just connecting to your friends to find out what’s on their minds, you connect to like-minded SoaPers…for a limited time period (24 hours) I just wanted to set it up and see what happens…so…here it goes…

How to join up.

[there is no charge, but if you don't have unlimited SMS, you may want to get it] It’s pretty simple:

1. Just SMS ‘SOAP’ to MOZES (66937)
2. You’ll get a confirmation message and instructions on how to join the broadcast
3. Done.

Then:

1. I’ll send out a couple of messages a week with fun stuff [the first one was how to get Samuel L. Jackson to call your friends]
2. Then late on the 17th, I’ll send out instructions on how to join the flash group as well as how to post messages to it

From there…who knows?

Everybody is looking for plugs lately. This is probably what it feels like to have a popular webpage, eh? Here’s a couple:

• … I am a representative of New Line Cinemas in the New Orleans area. On Saturday, August 12th we are throwing a SOAP bar crawl down a popular street, complete with Sam Jackson look-alike contest and many prizes and giveaways. We were wondering if you could post about the bar crawl on your blog, so New Orleans fans of SOAP can see information about the bar crawl. If this is possible, please write me back as soon as possible, so i can either send you the information or a .jpeg of the flyer.
• I’m an audience co-ordinator for the CBS Early Show. I was just
  wondering if you could post the information that Sam Jackson is coming down to our show to do an interview on Monday, August 14 to promote Snakes On A Plane. The interview will be outdoors on our plaza at 59th and 5th and all are welcome to attend. It is recommended that they show up at about 7:30 a.m. if they would like to attend the show. If not, the interview will be done at about 9:15. If they do attend the show, we have free breakfast and posterboard and markers for everyone.

Free posterboard!

I was chatting with someone today in a position to know about the Samuel L. Jackson phone call system that was posted last week.  I asked him how many calls have been made thus far:

Call From Sam will likely hit about 1mil calls by the end of the day (also the end of our first week).  Today looks like it will be our biggest day yet, so it’s still picking up speed, which is pretty mind blowing.  Our peek was 360/minute or 6 per second.

A million calls! Hell, I only made 250,000… I wonder who made the rest?

Here are a few things that I’ve picked up in the last few weeks. The first is a set of pilot wings that New Line was giving away at Comic-Con (and presumably other places):

The second item is a dogtag which was very kindly given to me by Lin Shaye when I was at Comic-Con. Thanks again, Lin. It’s possible (although I’m not at all sure) that it’s the silver one that New Line is selling (for the very very wealthy, they also have a $4,000 gold and diamond one). At the time I thought it was made of whatever dogtags are normally made out of (tin?), and, while I appreciated it very much, probably didn’t treat it with as much care as it would deserve if it were made out of silver:

Finally, is the finished version of the book about the fans of Snakes on a Plane by David Waldon. It’s done up with glossy color pages, unlike the last version I took pictures of:

I mentioned before that David Ellis was going to be attending a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse on the 18th. Sadly, that is no longer correct:

I am unable to attend the screening friday at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. My sched has changed and I have be in LA for casting friday for Asylum (my new movie) before traveling back to South Carolina Sat the 19th. I am bummed I will miss seeing the movie with the Austin fans, but will go see it in LA at a theater on Friday night the 18th… I want everyone to know that I am not someone who is blowing off the fans because I think I am too cool.

Thanks so much… David

Sorry Austin, maybe next time.

Who does those punks up in Cambridge think they are? I used to live right next door to them, so they should know that reviewing novelizations of Snakes on a Plane is my thing. They’re treading on my toes. Here’s their (negative mixed) review.

New Line appears to have produced Snakes on a Babe. You play a matching game by removing snakes overlayed a photo of a naked woman. Well, sort of. There’s a little bit of catch. It’s not quite as bad as it seems.

The Alamo Drafthouse seems to be putting on a good collection of events. First we announced their Blanks on a Blank contest. They’ve now posted their submitted entries. There’s about 75, so I haven’t watched them yet. Anybody want to take on the task and start posting reviews? (the creators of Aardvarks on a Tank were the ones to email me the link, so they get a plug).

Then we announced David Ellis would be attending a screening there on the 18th. No update on that.

Now, they’ve announced they’re holding a charity event called Snakes on a Day:

Starting at 10 pm, August 17^th, Shannon McCormick, artistic director of Gnap! Theater Projects and Austin-based actor and comedy improviser, will attempt to induce in himself the state of being trapped on an airplane full of venomous snakes by watching the most anticipated movie of the 21^st century around the clock for the first day of its release.

Audience members are invited to join in the delirium-creating marathon. If an audience member makes it through all 24 hours of the film, his or her admission is free. If they bail after the first screening, they pony up $1000. For each subsequent screening they make it through, the price is ratcheted down by $100. All proceeds gained in this way will be donated to Venomousreptiles.org, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of our poisonous friends and rehabilitating injured venomous reptiles.

At one point in college I, along with crazymonk, had planned to do something similar with the Battlefield Earth… sadly that never came to pass.

Full list of Blanks on a Blank entries after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wanted Samuel L. Jackson to call your parents, insult them, and then tell them to see Snakes on a Plane? Man, now’s your chance. New Line has posted this little tool that allows you to enter some information about someone who you’d like Samuel L. Jackson to call and, then, he’ll call them. It’s actually pretty straightforward.

He insulted my glasses and my bookish, schoolbound ways. It’s fairly customizable.

Ok, this is my last update for tonight. I’ve got such a backlog, I might start posting more things per day to get them out of my folders. I’ve always tried to limit it to two or three, but that might go out the window as we draw closer to the film.

Also, oddly, I had a big surge of hits today from Taipei.  Can anyone explain that?

Tickets are now on sale for Snakes on a Plane on both MovieFone and Fandango.

Fark beat me to the punch on organizing groups to go to the film, however, if you’re interested in going as a group with other Snakes on a Blog readers, you can either discuss your plans in the comments to this post, or even better, post your city on the forum and link up with other locals.