Movie Marketing and PR News
McDonald’s and Fox are movie promoting buddies, having signed a deal that would allow the fast food chain to market characters from its upcoming animated (in addition to the recent Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian) film Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. [Commercial Exploitation]
Get the lowdown on what it was like to attend VoceNation. [Movie Marketing Madness]
Warner Bros has high hopes for The Hangover. [Risky Business Blog]
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson spotted getting rather comfortable with one another, while we’re getting closer and closer to the much-looked-forward to Twilight sequel. Plus planted stories and unsourced press releases such as this one. A publicity stunt, or a Tom Cruise-Kathy Holmes-like coupling? [LA Examiner]
Is movie piracy wrong? Well is it? Two high school-attending members of the latter rungs of Generation Y debate on the matter. [Silver Chips]
Why the General Motors bankruptcy is bad news, very very bad news for the television industry. [Deadline Hollywood]
The Smithsonian Museum may house artifacts, but its marketing team is definitely with the times.
The renowned museum planned some promotions around the movie A Night at the Museum 2 to draw in visitors it probably wouldn’t have gotten had it not been a school field trip: the widely-targeted but mostly elusive younguns. [Kansas City Star]
If your mail is taking longer than usual to get there, Netflix and Blockbuster just might be the ones to blame. They may possibly be getting some favoritism mailing speed from the postal office. [Hacking Netflix]
K-Mart Teams Up with Paramount and Dreamworks to Promote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has a friend in K-Mart. The retailer is combining marketing forces with the studios to lend some more weight to the tetosterone-driven marketing and PR campaign for the action movie.
The film’s June 24th release date works perfectly with K-Mart’s Father’s Day promotions.
Mike Duff of BNET breaks down the partnership:
“Marketing elements range from circular advertisements to email blasts. Also included are in-store signage, radio and sale of Transformers-themed gift cards. Additionally, Kmart has created a 24-page movie-themed comic book it will distribute in select theaters during the initial promotional period, June 7 to 21. A movie adaptation, it also mounts Kmart ads highlighting the campaign’s core movie ticket offer, licensed merchandise and coupons designed to drive traffic to both stores and the company’s web site.”
It would seem that K-Mart is every movie studio’s champion. During The Dark Knight movie marketing mayhem, the Sears-owned company was among the Warner Bros film’s most ardent co-promoters, offering strategically-placed in-store licensed movie-related merchandise, and dubbing itself as the Official Batman Headquarters.
Lionsgate Films Records Loss…and Gain for 2009 Fiscal Year
Thanks to the revenue gotten from its string of box office hits this year—Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes To Jail, My Bloody Valentine 3-D and The Haunting In Connecticut—Lionsgate Films enjoyed an 8% increase in revenue, a whopping $1.47 billion while nursing a net loss of $163.0 million.
Lionsgate Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jon Feltheimer sent out this statement:
“We ended our fiscal year on a strong note with record box office in the first calendar quarter.
“We are also pleased that we could drive library, home entertainment and television revenues to record levels in such a challenging market environment. We believe that continued strength in our core businesses coupled with meaningful contributions from many of our recent investments and lower theatrical marketing costs position us for strong positive metrics in fiscal 2010.”
The studio’s biggest gains were apparently in the home video sector, where it boasted an impressive revenue figure of $675.6 million—about a 5% increase from its 2008 figures.
Its revenue from its recent three-month old acquisition of media properties TV Guide and TV Guide.com, was calculated at $10.8 million.
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
DVD Rental
Nearly four years since its September 2009, Crash is still the #1 movie rental. This is news to some, but perfectly logical to others. Crash the movie has such an array of timeless and universal themes, its appeal will certainly not wane in decades to come.
Is Netflix coming to PS3 and Wii? Wouldn’t surprise me.
DVD rental stores are raising their fees, inducing a boom in DVD kiosks.
Movie Packaging
The DVD and Blu-ray release of Fox Searchlight’s Notorious Big biopic Notorious will feature previously unrelease footage.
Movie Piracy
Think about bootlegging, dear old boon docks dweller? Think again. The FBI is cracking down on DVD piracy even in the most obscure small towns.
Technology
In California, the energy-conscious state, some are concerned that the advent of flat planet television is sucking up energy resources. The television set industry begs to differ.
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook: Blockbuster Money Troubles? + French Movie Audiences + University Students Screen Porn + and More
Movie Rental News
Is Blockbuster experiencing money troubles? According to the Wall Street Journal, the movie rental retail chain’s auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP evaluation expressed some concern about its financial situation:
“Blockbuster’s financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” or viable business. The company had warned investors last month that auditors were likely to raise those concerns.”
Observers like the NY Daily News, are predicting the demise of Blockbuster, while others are asserting that there is cause for alarm, but are no doubt waiting on further developments.
In a financial crunch environment where every industry—including the movie indsutry—is experiencing financial hardships, maybe there’s hope that Blockbuster will pull through.
International Movie Marketing
International films are gaining a streaming edge on the Internet. A string of Korean short films are now available on Rapid Share.
And if you’re talking movie marketing and PR, do think of one Edison Chen, please. Mr. Chen, a major movie star in Hong Kong was involved in a sexual scandal…or merely an awkward candid photo moment in a string of photos that leaked on the Internet (according to U.S. standards).
The actor ignored death threats from moral purists to get on the promotion trail for his latest movie The Sniper. Now that’s some really zealous movie marketing fervor.
French movie audiences are not apt to go watch a musical, according to a major French film director Christophe Barratier who tells the Boston Globe,
“French people are nervous about musicals. They say, ‘Oh no, will there be singing?’ ” He points out that Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge,” while being something of a worldwide phenomenon in 2001, wasn’t a big deal in France. And “Les Miz?” Un flop.
So why is he slapping them with the movie Paris 36?
Movie Business
Peter Bart, the longtime editorial helmer for trade paper Variety, has stepped down.
Veteran movie publicist William McLeod passed away at 50. During his lifetime McLeod orchestrated many successful publicity campaigns for Terry Hines and Associates, Strand Releasing, before starting his own firm. Condolences to his family.
Marketing Movies, Collegiate Style
While some studios are having meetings about how to develop a sure-fire plan to consistently grab college students’ attention, certain developments in collegiate movie screening land would lead one to note that the best method is to have some sexy content and let the students come to you. University of Maryland students screened a pornographic flick on campus in spite of warnings from campus censorship administrators. The UM students are claiming that they’re screening the porn flick not for their viewing pleasure but for the gratification of first amendment rights.
Movie Marketing and Publicity
So is that X Men Origins: Wolverine full movie 100,000 illegal downloads going to be detrimental to the movie’s scheduled May release? Probably not if you give credence to Mark Colvin’s post about the leak doing more good than harm.
So the cult classic Toxic Avenger is getting new life on Broadway.
Cable
Will cable become a relic of the past in years to come?
Still Credit: AMP
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
Movie Marketing
While its nemesis Netflix continues to gain subscribers, Blockbuster has lost $360 million in the fourth quarter, but like a real trooper it’s not planning on going down. The retail movie rental company is refinancing loans, tapping deeper into the video game business, and lower in-store video rentals. [AP]
Has Hollywood been pushing for movie piracy all along?[P2P]
And speaking of piracy, NBA star Yao Ming thinks he can help. [THR]
Ok, just one more thing about movie piracy. Is there a link to terrorism and organized crime? [SM]
Even marketers for DVD packaging of TV shows are going all out. [TSOD]
International
Filmart is the place for Europe’s films. [THR]
Legal
The movie Sahara, based on a book of the same name, was released back in 2005, but the legal quagmire ensuing from its release is continuous.
The latest is that the book’s author Clive Cussler was ordered to pay $13.9 million dollars in legal fees to Crusader Entertainment, the film production company behind the low-revenue film. Cussler originally sued the company for failing to consult him on the film; Crusader Entertainment had countersued soon afterwards claiming that the author had misled them about the book’s sales. [AHN]
Web Marketing
Wireless giant Nokia’s social networking site Mosh is going bye bye, although the official elimination date has not yet been announced. The move is surprising many tech pundits who find it hard to swallow that Nokia is letting go such a highly-trafficked web property (180 million downloads). Some reasons being speculated upon include Warner Music’s taking way music catalog privileges away from the cell phone company’s grasp for use on the site, as well as its increasing attention on its upcoming store chains Ovi.
When the sales get tough, the marketing gets going. Now even food marketers are going the viral route. [R]
Movie Marketing and PR News
Web Marketing
Google has an advertising model based on users’ searching and page views perusing, but some, in particular advertising watchdogs and consumer protection advocates, are concerned that this could be violating the rights of citizens. [EW]
If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably in the movie marketing and PR business. But are you making Twitter, the social blogging platform, a must? Do join. You might be glad you did. [Forbes]
Like most people in the movie marketing and PR business, you want to know what people are saying about your brand. Microsoft thinks it can help you; it’s come out with Twends, a search engine of some sort that gathers public opinion about brands, people things. [CNET]
You might really want to rethink that movie marketing and PR campaign, the one you were planning on launching solely by email. [PC Mag]
Tech
Rob Spence, a Canadian filmmaker who lost his eyes in a shooting accident, is turning his eyes into a human camera lens with the help of a prosthetic eye. [HL]
Landline phones will be what the telegram is for the 21st Century…one of those archaic words you’ll probably see mentioned only in period films. [IW]
Movies
Pixar is conducting a marketing tactic for which its rather famous: releasing a short film concurrently with a feature. [SR]
Maybe they’re waiting until the perceived super-hero movie backlash cools down, but Marvel is pushing the Thor movie back a couple of notches. [RBB]
Deleted scenes are such a good emotional blackmail tactic for the ardent movie fan. [AP]
Legal
Are websites that feature movies that have yet to be released a blessing in disguise, or shall it be called by it’s name p-i-r-a-c-y. [PJ Star]
Does the North Carolina woman suing Jane Fonda, Warner Bros and Jennifer Lopez thinks she coined the mother-in-law paradigm? [Guardian]
Movie Marketing and PR News
Movies
The next time a movie opens, don’t think of it as a release, but rather as a branding opportunity, or better yet a branding relaunch.
The folks behind the movie Breaking Upwards are resorting to movie marketing and PR overdrive to draw attention to their film.
The movies released in ‘08 that made it fun to walk over to a movie theatre.
Fantastic Four redux?
First comic books, and now sleuth classics. Hollywood is throwing its hopes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. In the post-Truth commercials Millenium, the movie’s merchandising will not include bongs, surely!
The French movie Welcome is really unwelcomed by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson who doesn’t appreciate its handling of French-British immigration issues. With all due respects sir, you should have put a lid on it; now the movie which could have been a slept-on artsy will be a film du jour.
No, film studies is not a dead field.
Sugar, the movie about a Dominican teen’s journey to the ranks of Major League Baseball has released a poster for the film that doesn’t quite tell the story.
DVD Marketing and Packaging
Does it matter how a DVD is packaged? DVD talk breaks down the packaging of Role Models for us.
Bloopers and deleted scenes, directors’ cuts. Movie directors have to find some tactic to get us to buy the DVD these days.
If you’re not sure that the VHS tape is dead, do please check out this pic that tells a thousand words.
Movie Finance
The national recession is leading to yet another domino effect: Hollywood taking less and less chances. Will original scripts suffer, and will good stories just float around while Hollywood tries to chase prequels, remakes, and flicks with franchise potential?
More and more layoffs are taking place in print media. When will it end? Not any time soon, you can be sure.
Lauren Daly of South Coast Today argues that chick lit makes women dumb, so what effect does chick flicks have on the gender?
Branding
In a move that some are calling misguided and others are labeling welcomed, Dora the Explorer is getting a revamping in the form of a new Mattel tweenage doll. Another Mattel mainstay is also getting a makeover, the half-century old Barbie.
At the end of the day, it really is all about branding and, oh, wait the resonance principle too.
Web Marketing
Someone actually thinks that supplanting Google is a possibility in the near future.
And you thought things were over for it after the Academy Awards! Slumdog Millionaire surpasses Milk, Valkyrie and Changeling and becomes the most dowloaded (albeit illegal) movie post-Oscars.
Is it safe to say that one repercussion of many newspapers going down under, and therefore less critical movie reviewers, is the rise of the YouTube reviewer quote pullout?
Movie still via Foam Magazine
Movie Marketing and PR News
As a movie marketers, and as publicists, and industry pundits, which of these marketing business books, if any, are somewhere on your book shelf?
Where are most of the users of Twitter based? Not in New York, for sure. [Fimoculous]
Literary success doesn’t always translate into cinematic success. [YP]
Now that pop stars Chris Brown and Rihanna have had a public reconciliation, Sony Screen Gems pretends that the idea of erasing him out of their movie Bone Deep never occured to the brass there. [EW]
Is the comic-turned movie on its last leg? That’s debatable, perhaps. To the director of Watchmen, the genre-twisting should have an R.I.P 2009 on its tombstone. [NYMag]
Meanwhile, could word of mouth practically destroy the Watchmen film’s chances of rocking the box office?
Oh, and speaking of Watchmen, while some are swift to write off the idea of a sequel, another long-running franchise is far from dead, the ingenious Friday the 13th Inc. [RBB]
Oh, and lastly, speaking again of Watchmen, here’s the breakdown of the movie’s box office audience. [DHD]
Many observers are noting that Heath Ledger’s last movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus will be a hard marketing sell, not only because it is a fantasy film, but because of the approach of its director. Will U.S. distributors bite? [NAU
New trailers have been released in relation to the Terminator: Salvation movie. Now that everyone's so over the Christian Bale rant, we really needed another reminder that the next entry in The Terminator franchise is out in May. [Tampa Bay E]
For anyone contemplating on making a movie, applying the micro of the micro of the microfilmmaking method might help with economics. [MFM]
AMC has come up with a strategy for its show “Breaking Bad”…feeding fans with original snippets online. [RPB]