As Usual, Nikki Finke Is A Self-Serving Liar
I know some of you don’t care. “It’s just nature,” you say. “Why be upset when we all know she is a con artist?,” you say.
I guess I care because some people are still too stupid to realize they are being lied to. And it pisses me off.
This morning, it’s “As usual, the Hollywood box office experts (who had predicted this to me) were right on the money.”
They were wrong on Friday and wrong on Saturday. She printed it. Three different times. So when exactly did they get anything right? And why would being completely ignorant about box office and then simply disappearing the many incorrect pieces of information you were selling just hours before draw anything less than disdain?
And then, she is so brazen that she not only misleads readers with obvious intent, but she actually gets aggressive about claiming that the bad information never existed and in fact, the providers of that bad intel are always right.
This is why NIkki exists. She has zero shame. And everyone who does is in this “but if I mention it, it gives her more importance” echo chamber. And the greatest irony of all is that Nikki uses the “truth to power” lie about herself relentlessly while other are afraid to be truthful about her. This is how monsters are made.
No doubt, part of the irritation is that Drudge has decided to anoint Finke by link, driving most of her traffic by linking to her horrible, normally premature box office coverage. But mostly, I just don’t like liars. And I hate liars who scream about being truthful and correct most of all.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me multiple times every week, shame on me.
I’m with you on the Drudge link. I don’t mind MOJO, but Finke is beyond undeserving of that traffic. I scoffed at how desperate her first lines are. She knows she’s batting way below 500 at this point and her answer is to throw as much shit as possible, in as disorganized a fashion as she can get away with. It looks like the blog equivalent of John Doe’s apartment in Se7en.
She’s the worst.
She must be so fucking insecure. She’s a grown woman who lives in a fantasy world where she convinces herself she’s never made a mistake.
I think the funniest thing about her latest box office “analysis” is that she thinks the worldwide total is now 405 million.
“Updated numbers from overseas for Avatar show James Cameron’s big budget epic has made at least $212.2M domestic, $145M foreign from 14,844 screens in 108 countries, for a new cume of $405M worldwide.”
Naturally this will be corrected at some point, and then, in her mind, it will have never happened, and she will extend her record for the longest any human being has gone without ever making a mistake.
Yes, she has no idea what she’s talking about. Drudge isn’t linking to her for the analysis; he’s linking to her because she’s the first to get the numbers. Content is king.
Yes, she has no idea what she’s talking about. Drudge isn’t linking to her for the analysis; he’s linking to her because she’s the first to get the numbers. Content is king.
Actually, Sharon, he chose to link to her when others had numbers at the same time.
She doesn’t actually get numbers first. She prints numbers prematurely to try to be first.
Every studio exec has access to the numbers she prints when she prints them. They are not hard to get. But they are not reliable.
If false content is king, then its consumers get what they deserve…. like this weekend’s virtual tie between Avatar and Sherlock Holmes… which was only off by $10 million.
As you might have guessed, been there, done that. And I stopped because, as any smart studio person will tell you, those projections will embarrass you as often as not… much like misusing tracking as a box office estimator.
Sony started feeding Nikki box office for The Da Vinci Code. And that’s when she got her first Drudge link for box office. Sony kept feeding her to keep having access to Drudge to place their spin. Other studios followed.
Then she started pushing to run numbers first, even if they were inaccurate 90% of the time… which they are. But she then covers them up by overwriting them as closer numbers come in.
Why don’t others do it? Because it is stupid and irresponsible… like so much of what Nikki does.
I keep explaining this. The two reasons that Nikki gets anything first are, 1) That she will spin any story the way her source tells it to her, and 2) She has that Drudge access.
This is an industry that knows exactly what she is but continues to build her up in order to use her. And 20 or more journalists could do what she does – and do it better – if they had the stomach for it. A couple would like to be her, but don’t know how.
At least you can feel good about the fact that she reads your stories, and their comments.
From her latest ‘writethru’…
“As usual, the Hollywood box office experts (who had predicted this to me last week but I doubted them) were right on the money.”
“Updated numbers from overseas for Avatar show James Cameron’s big budget epic has made at least $212.2M domestic, $405M foreign (after taking in $145M from 14,844 screens in 108 countries this weekend), for a new cume of $617M worldwide.”
The other thing she does that’s incredibly pathetic is that she moderates her comments and only prints positive ones, so it seems like she has this vast fawning audience.
If you post a comment about something she did wrong, it never sees the light of day.
Basically she is the delusional queen from Snow White.
i loathe, LOATHE websites that print stories and then delete them when they’re wrong.
it is fucking maddening that more people aren’t bothered by this.
“The other thing she does that’s incredibly pathetic is that she moderates her comments and only prints positive ones”
I’ve had the experience of one of my comments go “missing” and an almost identical one – but MUCH more aggressively worded – appearing a short time after.
It makes me wonder if she’s not only moderating, but editing her comments to suit her own ends.
(Caveat – it may be that I couldn’t find my own comment and another, real, poster was just echoing my language in a douchier way. But it did seem odd)
I noticed Nikki gets the numbers first but they are almost always wrong and her projections are the worst.Her weekend project for SH and Avater was $70 mil which was wrong for both films. She had a range for the Sat number for AVATAR of $27-32 mil which was pretty much worthless.
I politely pointed out in her comments section that her original numbers were not accurate and that the new numbers are substantially different and she deleted my comment.
In the words of Cheese Wagstaff – “That’s some shameless shit right there…”
David, you write:
“She doesn’t actually get numbers first. She prints numbers prematurely to try to be first. Every studio exec has access to the numbers she prints when she prints them. They are not hard to get. But they are not reliable.”
Have you thought of publishing these figures with a responsible caveat letting the readers know that the numbers are not reliable so that there is no misinformation…and then responsibly and with full disclosure give the updates?
I ask because it bothers me that Finke gets so much traffic from publishing first when the unethical way that she goes about her business and how she writes over her own mistake makes me feel that if somebody else put up that info in the same timeframe that people would start going to a different source to get away from her. I have to admit that I do check her only because she puts out weekend numbers and intra-weekend numbers when no one else does and I’m sure it speaks badly of me that I do so knowing that she is often wrong – and I am sure that I am not the only one doing this.
I would love to come here or somewhere else instead of Finke and I am sure that many others would do the same.
This is the tricky part, Van.
If I did what she did and claimed principle, it would still accelerate others going down that road that I disapprove of based on an ideal, not on function. I would become what I beheld.
And the only real reason for me to do it would be competition.
It is a slippery slope.
Getting into the business of publishing gossip, which this essentially is and other forms of which Nikki thrives on, but “publishing it legitimately” is oxymoronic. On the other hand, leaving it alone and never mentioning the shit storm around us seems irresponsible as well.
I appreciate your input, Van, I do. I don’t mean to poo-poo it. But this is a very challenging problem. The site that has chased this hardest is The Wrap, but sadly, they have become a scandal sheet a lot of the time because they quickly realized that it drives traffic.
David, I appreciate your response but what I am saying is that if the only available early information is possibly inaccurate then a disclaimer such as “this information is early and likely will be different once better information comes in” is not gossip and is fair – after all you are reporting what is available and adding all the reasonable caveats.
Gossip is talking about Ben Silverman doing drugs a la Nikki Finke. That I have no interest in but reporting on what may be known for box office with research into a couple sources is fair, as long as the information is properly explained I think is reasonable…
…it may be gossip, maybe I am trying to stretch what is reasonable reporting – I don’t exactly know as I am not a journalist and I don’t know the definition of what the standards are nor what the proper caveats to allow publishing such information is considered reasonable – but there really needs to be alternative to Nikki Finke that at least is relatively more palatable…
Thanks for listening.
My last comment on this – the only time I go to Nikkie Finke is intra-weekend box office reporting.
I suspect that many do the same and I don’t read her gossip reporting at all. I do appreciate and understand the idea of not becoming a scandal sheet and I would stop reading your blog if that is what you did but I think that that early BO reporting is slightly different and it would be great to have someone different than Finke to go to and I suspect it would also drop by 50% her raison d’etre…
… and fewer people being polluted by her is something which I think is a good thing which we can all agree on.
I agree that early box office is not gossip, as long as it comes with a caveat.
It is an educated guess with more information at hand than existed before the weekend started.
It’s like getting a weather report a few days early. You know it may change, but it’s probably more accurate than the one from the 10 day forecast.
guy explained it better than me – it is like a weather report or perhaps like a stock earnings projection – everyone understands that it is a prediction or a projection and that it may not be accurate until actuals come in.
With the proper caveats it is all well and good and is not scandal or gossip rag reporting.
Have “Friday Projections/estimates”, “Saturday…” etc…with up front disclaimers and caveats.
You will be doing everyone a favor by providing an alternative to Nikki Finke, David.
Agree with what everyone else is saying here. I would rather read your analysis than Nikki’s. The only problem now is that since Drudge has actually started linking to her, it might be hard for him to break that habbit.