Get the latest gossip
Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out For Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus Groups
The threat of toxic fandoms — from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to Bridgerton and Game of Thrones — has become an intractable headache for almost every studio.
In other words, “The Acolyte” was the latest high-profile target of “ toxic fandom,” the catchall term for when fan criticism curdles from good-faith dissatisfaction into a relentlessly negative, often bigoted online campaign against either the project or its stars or creative leaders. Still, toxic fandoms have grown so pernicious that they’ve become a fact of life for many — and so powerful that while talent, executives and publicists will privately bemoan the issue, fear of inadvertently triggering another backlash kept several studios from speaking for this story even on background. In an August interview with Amazon MGM Studios TV chief Vernon Sanders about “The Rings of Power,” the executive said the show hadn’t experienced the same racist hostility in advance of Season 2 that had greeted its 2022 debut.
Or read this on Variety