Disney To Tweet As Carrie Fisher For Episode IX Hype
Carrie Fisher is getting another lease on life — and this time, she’s living on forever… in the form of 280-character tweets. According to FSW sources, Disney is moving forward with a plan to purchase the rights to Fisher’s Twitter handle in perpetuity. In other words, the Mouse House will be able to post messages and interact with the late celebrity’s sizable following using a close approximation of her “tone, voice, and manner.”
“It’s brilliant when you think about it. Fans get to engage with Carrie for the rest of their natural lives, while Disney gets a captive audience eager to hear about anything Star Wars-related.” said a Lucasfilm insider.
Should the Fisher estate agree to the purchase, Disney will re-activate Carrie’s Twitter to coincide with the start of the $100MM marketing effort for Star Wars: Episode IX. Rumor has it, as part of the proposed agreement, Disney will also be able to leverage Gary Fisher, Carrie’s beloved dog, in various tweets similar to how Fisher would often do. Fans can also look forward to strings of mysterious emojis to decipher — one of the performer’s other Twitter hallmarks.
Our insider believes the move represents a watershed moment. “Disney was testing the waters with Stan Lee when he tweeted from beyond the grave to promote Captain Marvel. And fans ate it up! So the momentum is there, and the zeitgeist is ready. I think Carrie tweeting again is going to be a game changer.”
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time Disney has brought people back from the dead as a marketing stunt. However, unlike CG replicas of human likenesses, which tend to create the uncanny valley effect (see Princess Leia in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), resuscitating a performer in social media removes the off-putting visual aspect.
“Official Dead Celeb Twitter is real, and it’s going to be huge,” said Dru Watson, social media expert and founder of Klout. Watson believes re-activating dead celebrities on social media is a cost-effective way for brands to tap into nostalgia, while staying relevant for generations to come.
“Disney can hire an intern for $12 an hour to crank out some tweets, and reply to fans as Carrie Fisher. Compare that to $2MM for CG to enhance a motion captured performance by a lookalike. There’s no question – the future is dead celebs tweeting.”
That begs the question: who is tweeting as the late Stan Lee? And who will do the same for Carrie Fisher?
Do the studios have a responsibility to reveal who is actually writing as these beloved personalities? Does it even matter who’s tweeting as long as they capture the soul of the celebrities, and make fans feel as though they had an authentic exchange?
Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Twitter, where we are neither dead or celebrities. I swear.
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