【New Folder (2014)】

What if I told you there's a fairly reliable way to predict whether a movie is New Folder (2014)good or bad before any critics have published or tweeted a single word, sometimes days or weeks in advance of that Rotten Tomatoesscore?

There is. It's been hiding in plain sight for years, but is gaining accuracy -- the more powerful the Tomatometer becomes, the more predictive it becomes. And it's spooky how spot-on it already can be.

Call it the Rotten Embargos score: a corollary roughly calibrated to the time between the lifting of a review embargo and the first available public showtimes. Movies whose reviews publish well in advance have significantly higher Rotten Tomatoesscores than those posted on shorter windows, and points between tend to correspond on a sliding scale.

It's always been good Hollywood horse sense that a late-lifting embargo is the sign of a stinker. If a studio knows it's got a dud, it'll embargo reviews up against the street date -- Transformers: The Last Knightreviews were allowed to post at 7 p.m. on a Thursday, the very moment East Coast public screenings get underway -- to protect it from long exposure to the ugly green splat. But it's also true that if the studio knows it's got a winner, it'll give that number plenty of time in the sun.

The fresh twist is in how telling that inverse relationship has become.

My colleague Angie Han and I compiled data from 27 major wide releases of 2017 that were assigned specific embargo times. As you can see below, as the elapsed time decreases, so do the Rotten Tomatoesscores:

(Editor's note: Warner Bros. set a Wonder Woman "social media" embargo for May 18, before written reviews. We counted that date for this chart, as first reactions to that film were highly anticipated and widely reported on.)

There are exceptions, always will be

As you can see, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Talesand Baywatchare really messing with the curve. And there are sure to be others that disobey the rule.

Since no one's suggesting the lead times are what's affecting reviews -- it's really the other way around -- there's good reason to think the films tested well (Piratesgot a good response at Cinemacon, before Disney set embargo) and the studios came in over-confident. It's also possible that films considered "critic-proof," with built-in audiences and fandoms, aren't as vulnerable to rotten scores, so they just let 'em fly.

It's also possible that there's a built-in nonsense factor to all of this. Hey, this theory was never going to be a perfect predictor. But it's certainly tantalizing, especially when you begin to play it forward.

Looking ahead, from Warner Bros. Pictures comes the latest adaptation of Stephen King's It, whose embargo just happens to lift at 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday. With the first public screenings going down Thursday at 7 p.m., Ithas 1 day, 17 hours of lead time.

And that would not bode very well for It at all.

That's within range of A Dog's Purpose(30%), Snatched (35%), Monster Trucks(32%) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets(51%). But It-- as a nostalgia remake, a Stephen King joint and a horror film -- nudges it into that "critic-proof" category, meaning things could get a little skewed.

I'll trust the process anyway, and predict that Itgets something like 45% (just slightly better than the average of the four comps I named above). And there's another sign that Itmight not be all it's buzzed-up to be: That 2 a.m. ET embargo time. When a studio knows reviews are going to be a rough ride, they often want that news breaking when the East Coast is sound asleep.

We'll keep noodling on this one, and report in as review embargoes become known to us -- they're usually set right around the time of the earliest press screenings, a week to a month out from release.

Until the studios get wise and put an embargo on their embargo times, that is.

Below find all the films listed in the chart above, with their corresponding data, listed from shortest embargo time to longest:

Transformers: The Last Knight

Embargo:Thursday, June 20, 7 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday June 20, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:0 days, 0 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:15%

The Emoji Movie

Embargo:Thursday, July 27, noon PST (originally set for 6 p.m. PST)Public release:July 27th, 7 p.m. ESTTurnaround time:4 hours (moved from negative-2 hours)Rotten Tomatoes score:6%

The Space Between Us

Embargo:Thursday, Feb 2, 12:00 a.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, Feb 2, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:19 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:17%

The Dark Tower

Embargo:Wednesday, August 2, 11 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, August 3, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:20 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:21%

Ghost in the Shell

Embargo:Wednesday, March 29, 10 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday March 30, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:21 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:44%

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Embargo:Wednesday, May 10, 5 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, May 11, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 2 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:28%

The Mummy

Embargo:Wednesday, June 7, noon ETPublic release:June 8, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:16%

Valerian

Embargo:Wednesday, July 19, 9 a.m. ET Public release:July 20, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 10 hours Rotten Tomatoes score:51%

Monster Trucks

Embargo:Wednesday, Jan 11, 12:01 a.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, January 12, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 19 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:32%

Snatched

Embargo:Wednesday, May 10, 9 a.m. ETPublic release:May 11, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 19 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:35%

A Dog's Purpose

Embargo:Wednesday, January 24, 9:30 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, January 26, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:1 day, 21 hours, 30 minutesRotten Tomatoes score:30%

Rough Night

Embargo:Monday, June 14, 12:00 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday June 15, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:2 days, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:48%

Atomic Blonde

Embargo:Tuesday, July 25, 12:00 noon ETPublic release:July 27, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:2 days, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:76%

Baywatch

Embargo:Tuesday, May 23, 12:01 a.m. ETPublic release:March 16, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:2 days, 18 hours, 59 minutesRotten Tomatoes score:19%

Dunkirk

Embargo:Monday, July 17, 4 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday July 20, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:3 days, 3 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:93%

The Fate of the Furious

Embargo:Monday, April 10, 2 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday April 13, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:3 days, 5 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:66%

Cars 3

Embargo:Monday, June 12, 12 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday June 15, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:3 days, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:68%

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Embargo:Monday, May 22, 9 a.m. ETPublic release:Thursday May 25, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:3 days, 10 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:29%

The Lego Batman Movie

Embargo:Saturday, Feb 4, 8 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, Feb 9, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:4 days, 23 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:90%

Girls Trip

Embargo:Wednesday, July 12, 12:00 noon ETPublic release:July 20, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:8 days, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:87%

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Embargo:Thursday, June 29, 9:00 a.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, July 6, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:8 days, 10 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:92%

Guardians of the Galaxy 2

Embargo:Monday, April 24, 3:01 a.m. ETPublic release:May 4, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:10 days, 16 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:82%

Alien: Covenant

Embargo:Saturday, May 6, 11:45 p.m. ETPublic release:May 18, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:11 days, 19 hours, 15 minutesRotten Tomatoes score:70%

Logan

Embargo:Friday, February 17, 4:30 p.m. ETPublic release:March 2, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:13 days, 2 hours, 30 minutesRotten Tomatoes score:93%

Beauty and the Beast

Embargo:Friday, March 3, 12 p.m. ETPublic release:March 16, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:13 days, 7 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:71%

Wonder Woman

Embargo*:Wednesday, May 18, 10:00 p.m. ETPublic release:Thursday, June 1, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:13 days, 21 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:92%

War for the Planet of the Apes

Embargo:Monday, July 26, 9 a.m. ETPublic release:Thursday July 13, 7 p.m. ETTurnaround time:17 days, 10 hoursRotten Tomatoes score:93%

jld

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