Collaborative efforts between social media and the slumping movie theater business

I came up with this rough idea while I was out on my lunch break today: What if movie production studios used Twitter to advertise movies? For example, what if 20th Century-Fox Film promoted the Wolverine movie on Twitter like this?:

20thCenturyFox: Wolverine seeks revenge against Victor Creed for the death of his girlfriend, & ends up going through the Weapon X program. (link)

That’s in pretty basic form. It might grab the attention of people who are interested in movies in general and those who might have heard of Wolverine.

But here’s the more exciting, engaging tweet that I had in mind while I was lunch-break brainstorming:

20thCenturyFox: Weapon XI and Logan's fight moves to the top of a nuclear reactor & it appears Logan is outmatched until Creed shows up to... (link)

This kind of tweet is much more likely to draw in 20thCenturyFox’s followers because it leaves it up to them to click on the link or ponder what will happen. The aim of this kind of tweet is for people to think “There’s action going on here, and someone appears to… to what??” Clicking on the link could take them to either the movie’s Web site that further explains the story or, my favorite, points them to a link of that specific scene. Using the second example from above, if someone were to click on the link, they would be taken to a site that plays the scene from when Creed shows up and a collage of video clips from that scene would play—enough to give the audience an idea of what happens in that scene, but not enough to give away everything that happens.

And, with the variety of ways for tweets to automatically update Facebook statuses and blogs and Web sites that post updates containing predetermined Twitter handles and keywords, something like this has the potential to reach an audience that doesn’t even originate from Twitter.

Profitability-wise, movie production companies would see an increase in site traffic, which could turn into more people who visit the theater when the movie is released. As for Twitter’s profitability from this? Well, I haven’t really come up with a solid idea for how this could increase the company’s income. Maybe a co-branding effort with the movie production company?