It's become de rigueur for social media to be employed in the marketing of everything from movies to fabric softener. And why not? It's essentially free, it's pretty easy if you're not a total luddite, and you've got an in-built global audience of millions that you can reach without even getting out of bed. Hollywood has latched onto the web 2.0 point of view by encouraging hashtags and including Twitter users' reviews on film posters (although sometimes they are, admittedly, tweets they've made themselves). Some filmmakers have decided to take their use of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram a step further, slowly teasing out information from their own productions. The reveal that Bryan Singer would be helming another X-Men film after his phenomenally popular prequel/sequel Days Of Future Past didn't come during an interview, or an official press release, but when the director himself tweeted the name and release date for the upcoming movie, and last month shared a photo of the script. Not huge spoilers or anything, unlike Kevin Bacon tweeting a huge spoiler for his TV series The Following before the episode in question aired, or Michelle Keegan forgetting that there was a spoiler-filled Coronation Street script page in the background of a snap she put on Twitter. Oops.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
