Fan power

As Dawn C. Chmielewski explains in The LA Times, film-makers are starting to canvas online opinion before they release a final cut.

Long before the summer thriller "Snakes on a Plane" slithers into theaters next month, potentially venomous fans started rattling.

The film's title says just about everything you need to know about the plot: On a transpacific flight, a Hawaiian mobster trying to eliminate a protected witness uncorks a carton of poisonous serpents. But as websites posted details during preproduction and as shooting got underway last summer, B-movie fans began to react. They wanted more creative snake attacks, more gore, more nudity and more of star Samuel L. Jackson's signature four-syllable obscenity.