From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News Home Page
URL	http://www.aintitcool.com
Type of site	Film Review
Available language(s)	English
Owner
Created by	Harry Knowles
Launched	1996
Current status	Active

Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles dedicated to rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror and action genres. It combines gossip from anonymous and unverified sources as well as news and reviews.

• Harry Knowles - "Head Geek"
• Jay Knowles - "Father Geek"
• Drew "Moriarty" McWeeny - "West Coast editor"
• H.T. Strong "Hercules The Strong" - "editor of all things televised"
• Eric "Quint" Vespe - "contributing editor/interviewer"
• Steve "Capone" Prokopy - "Mid-West/Chicago Editor"
• Ambush Bug - editor of AICN Comics
• Scott Green - "Editor/Reporter for Manga & Anime"

The site was among the first of its kind, and quickly built a reputation for breaking news^{[citation needed]}. It attracted a large number of anonymous Hollywood "insiders" who would submit reports on topics the studios tried to keep secret. The success of the site made it powerful enough to begin possibly affecting box office figures via "net buzz."

The site was launched in 1996 , and its name is attributed to John Travolta's habitual line in Broken Arrow. Harry began surfing the Internet while recovering from a debilitating accident in 1994. He spent a lot of time in newsgroups exchanging gossip and rumors about upcoming films, eventually creating his own Web site as part of his Internet hobby. A principal offering was Harry's colorful movie reviews, but the primary distinction from other sites was the (ostensible) insider news articles. P.A.s, people in the industry, secretaries and other behind-the-scenes folk would submit news such as casting decisions, scripts and release dates, though Knowles himself has admitted that in the beginning, some of the articles from these alleged "spies" were his own work generated from scouring the newsgroups.

Over the next few years the site expanded by adding associate contributors, most of whom would go by pseudonyms. A television section (dubbed 'coaxial') was added. Discussion boards were added. Practically from the start, it was supported by banner advertising. In 1998 the site was updated from the home-made style that Harry had first envisioned to an organized professional look. Discussion boards were added to every page. This "talkback" feature allows readers to critique every review and article offered.

The Web site garnered national attention in 1997 with the release of Batman and Robin. Harry posted several negative reviews from preview screenings. When the film performed poorly at the box office, studio executives complained that it had been sabotaged by the leaks to the Internet. From there it exploded. National magazines such as People and Newsweek called for interviews.

The site was parodied in the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back when the lead characters look at the "Movie Poop Shoot" site. That site was created at MoviePoopShoot.com as part of the film's publicity, and existed as a similar site for some time. However, after the release of Clerks II, the site has been shut down. A site has since been put back up at that URL, run by QuickStop Entertainment, a company probably best known for running the semi-official site for the TV series Scrubs.

A pilot for a TV series based on the site was shot in 2001 and submitted to Comedy Central.

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. This section has been tagged since December 2007.

The site has been criticized for its low standards in regard to attempting to independently distinguish legitimate rumors from wild speculation.

In 2002, Knowles was shown an early cut of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Lucasfilm reacted by shaking down employees and treating the incident as a leak, however no one was ever charged with a crime.

In 2003, site contributor "Hercules" speculated that a few pages of a spec script by Richard O'Sullivan might or might not be an excerpt from the fifth-season opener of the now-cancelled Joss Whedon series Angel. Though Ain't It Cool only summarized the pages' contents, other Internet sites receiving the pages posted them in their entirety. Though many suspect O'Sullivan himself engineered the circulation of the pages to these sites, O'Sullivan has denied any knowledge of how the pages got to Ain't It Cool or the other sites.

In 2004, a prank website successfully started a wild, made-up rumor about actor John Rhys-Davies (about an appearance in Star Wars Episode III) through Ain't it Cool News, which ended up becoming widely repeated in the mainstream media despite being a complete fabrication. [1] Such episodes have led to criticisms that the site has an overall negative influence on entertainment journalism.

In early May of 2007, the details of the season finale of Lost were posted from a blog and disclosed in a talkback for the show, and very soon after the article and talkback were removed. Angry fans of the show began "hijacking" other talkbacks of the site to discuss Lost, bringing some very negative reaction from the administrators of AICN.

AICN also has its own chatroom where geeks and film buffs can "have at it" in a free-form, unstructured manner.

Occasionally, filmmakers such as Matthew Vaughn, Michael J Bassett, Patrick Read Johnson or Anghus Houvouras stop in to chat with the geeks. Andy Milonakis also popped in regularly for a while, prior to the debut of his MTV show. Bruce Willis also posted on the website briefly to promote his film Live Free Or Die Hard.

• Official Homepage
• An early review of the site