Do production companies ever "choose" their test audience?

Do production companies ever "choose" their test audience? - From above of crop unrecognizable young female makeup artist pointing at arm of client while applying colorful eyeshadows on wrist for testing

I was recently looking up information on a Joe Wright film I was interested in, The Woman in the Window, as I was wondering why there hasn't been a trailer, and I swore I once read that the film was suppose to be out sometime this year.

As the Wikipedia page for the film states, it was pushed back to 2020 by Disney, who now has the rights of former FOX 2000 label.

The film was originally scheduled to be released on October 4, 2019, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. However, on July 9, it was pushed back sometime in 2020 as Disney plans to retool the film due to the negative test audience response towards the third act.

It will be the final film released under the Fox 2000 label; as part of The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of 21st Century Fox, the label will be discontinued.

But it also states that the reason they did this was because Disney's test audience didn't respond well to the third act of the film. Now Joe Wright isn't a director I would imagine Disney would have ever hired, if this wouldn't have been apart of the Fox deal, as he is a very visual film-maker whose adult stories often have twists or end rather dramatically.

So all of this made me wonder: How much control does any production company have over their test audience? Do they sometimes select people who meet certain criteria, that could in some way procure their own brand? Do they ever essentially choose their test audience?

(In other words: Was it really that Joe Wright's third act was bad, or was it that it wasn't a Disney-friendly film and they're aiming to find ways to bend it to their will now that they own it?)



Best Answer

Preview audiences are selected from a cross-section of the population, and are usually asked to complete a questionnaire or provide feedback in some form.

This Wikipedia article provides information, that the audience is a cross-section of the population. So they are chosen based on their profiles to reflect the population in the best way. Selecting a narrow group would not show the production company how the whole world would react to the movie. They select the group to be as diverse as possible, from the people who signed up to be test viewers.




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Do movies have test audiences?

Last year, there were 130 studio movies that got a wide release, and I'd say that 90 per cent of those went through a test screening, sometimes multiple times. The average movie will have three test screenings, and some will have as many as 10 or 15."

How test screenings work?

A test screening is a preview screening of a movie or television show before its general release to gauge audience reaction. Preview audiences are selected from a cross-section of the population and are usually asked to complete a questionnaire or provide feedback in some form.




Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: George Milton, Andrea Piacquadio, RF._.studio, Andrea Piacquadio