Only a decade ago, when those attending a highly-publicized film on opening night realized they were watching a bomb, they would race home and phone a friend, who would phone a friend, and in a week or so the word would have spread enough to kill sales.

In the era of Twitter, that week delay has been cut to minutes, as the makers of Brüno found out to their detriment recently.

At least, Time Magazine thinks so. After the success of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's followup was expected to have a huge opening weekend, perhaps in the $50 million range. It finished almost $20 million shy of that mark, however.

Print reviews of the film were generally negative, Those in the opening night audience seemed to agree, and wasted no time tweeting their negative opinions.

In fact, Brüno may have suffered three body blows -- the Michael Jackson effect, backlash from the gay community, and Twitter pans from disappointed fans as they left the theater.

Of course, the solution to this is to make a good movies. Do that and the audiences will find it, even without the aid of Twitter.

I wish I'd been paying attention to Twitter before I went to see Terminator Salvation.