Celebrities in the film industry not online in 2012 will lose big

It’s a plain simple fact that the film industry’s primary revenue generator in the coming years will come from digital sales. That also means people interacting digitally with movies will want to hear about them in a digital world.

So what does all that digital farce I just wrote really mean? Well, digitally speaking, if you don’t have a web presence in 2012 your brand will begin to disappear. Even if you are world famous, your fame will dwindle every hour that you delay your passage into the digital vortex. This also goes for big names funding their own movies and directing their own features or shorts without thinking about interacting with web audiences.

Hollywood studios, film producers and investors will have to cater to the fact that people will connect with their products and movies via the web first (They know this and are making big strides). That means all their visual assets; actors, film sets, storyboards, publicity images and everything else will be presented to people online. This means that for film premieres, if actors can’t interact with audiences digitally, then they can’t effectively promote movies. In fact, people will eventually expect that casts engage with them because the trend is already set in motion. Sites like Ustream and Youtube are already hosting live events in the film industry, but this trend will explode in the coming months and years.

If any A listers are reading this they are probably rolling their eyes at my insistence of being online, but guys and girls, its true. If you don’t join Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and interact with your fans your star power will dwindle. You need to do it, because every time you release a movie and you don’t reach out to people on the web directly, they in turn are not going to feel emotionally connected to you.

Film blogs will eventually overtake mainstream media in the entertainment space and where do most bloggers get their breaking news and opinion first? Twitter.

Here’s a small list of Celebrities in TV, Music and Film that are using the web to engage with their fans and win big:

Charlie Sheen, Jerry Bruckheimer, Piers Morgan, Eva Longoria, Nicole Scherzinger, Simon Cowell (A recent addition to the club), Ryan Seacrest, Ashton Kutcher, Alec Baldwin (He’ll be back), Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and many more.