Thou shalt not tweet, studios tell celebs

Reuters

Mike Myers, left, Cameron Diaz, centre, and New Zealand director Andrew Adamson with Shrek.

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Hollywood is trying to stamp out pesky leaks on Twitter and Facebook by adding new rules to its contracts forbidding actors and other creatives from blabbing on the social networking sites.

DreamWorks and Disney are the first studios to clamp down on tweeting, with Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers among the first to be affected when they film the upcoming Shrek sequel.

Influential trade publication The Hollywood Reporter revealed that new talent contracts from Disney forbid confidentiality breaches via "interactive media such as Facebook, Twitter or any other interactive social network or personal blog".

It reported that DreamWorks had a similar clause in its writers' contracts.

Celebrities have embraced social media because it allows them to broadcast their thoughts directly without being filtered by journalists.

It also affords a far more intimate connection with fans. For instance, top tweeters Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore gave fans backstage passes to the Oscars by publishing messages, videos and pictures on their Twitter accounts throughout the evening.

But the inability to control the message is leading some Hollywood execs to panic.

Paula Abdul recently surprised her Fox bosses by revealing through a tweet that she was leaving American Idol.

Heroes star Greg Gunberg published a message that led some wrongly to believe that the show was being cancelled.

And when Bones executive producer Hart Hanson joked that production had shut down due to "swine flu", the story quickly made it to the airwaves before Hanson clarified that no one on set had anything but the standard flu.

Outside Hollywood, professional sports leagues and media organisations around the world have also implemented policies curbing social media use.

"This is just the beginning," a talent lawyer told The Hollywood Reporter.

"Hollywood has a long history of controlling what talent says in the media. This is just a new area of media that hasn't been controlled yet."

But, ironically, while Hollywood might be fearful of confidential details leaking out on social networks, it is relying on these same tools to generate buzz.

Word of mouth chatter on Facebook and Twitter can make or break a film's opening weekend, signalling a shift in power away from the once-mighty film critics.

Online buzz drove Paranormal Activity to a US$7.9 million box office in the US and Canada last weekend, setting a record for a movie playing in fewer than 200 theatres. The low budget horror flick is now on its way to wider release.

But in July, the raunchy comedy Bruno gave a lesson in the perils of another kind of audience horror, as it suffered a sharper than usual box office drop after its opening following negative comments by individuals on websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

- © Fairfax NZ News