The Florida Project
That’s just one of the movies called out in this New York Times profile of studio A24, which also includes mention of Lady Bird, Moonlight and a handful of others.
Black Panther
While the movie wasn’t eligible for this year’s awards, Chadwick Boseman showed up at the Independent Spirit Awards with a bottle of Wakanda Forever Whiskey and Lupita Nyong’o wore “Vibranium by Versace” to the Oscars.
Seems retailers left money on the table by not stocking enough of the movie’s toys and boy, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out why they may have gone light on this one I mean was there something fundamentally different rooted in a mistaken cultural belief about who is or isn’t a sci-fi super hero fan at work here? Naaahhh….
Red Sparrow
Nice profile here of director Francis Lawrence, who’s trying to be as chill as possible about the movie’s box-office outcome.
Three Billboards…
The movie’s conceit of using three billboards to convey a message has been adopted by various social issues and coincided with an overall growth in the out-of-home ad market. A trade group gave the filmmakers a shoutout for all that with a billboard of its own.
Thoroughbreds
New profiles in the last week of both director Cory Finley where he talked about finally building up the nerve to make his movie and co-stars Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy about how they got involved with the movie and the bright careers both surely have ahead of them.
Gringo
Even though the movie was shot two years ago (meaning before whatever dank timeline we’re currently part of), David Oyelowo says it has a lot to say about immigration and other issues. He also clarifies that the role he plays was originally meant for a white actor, showing how you can add some interesting elements when you think outside the racial box.
The Academy Awards
In addition to my Adweek column where I took a look at some of the industry narratives that played out or were lurking in the background of the ceremony there were a few other interesting stories I didn’t get to or which have emerged later:
- Ratings for the broadcast hit an all-time low, further making the case that these awards can’t have it both ways, hoping to reach a mass audience and only recognizing limited-release films with narrow appeal.
- While Mudbound didn’t win, the Olympics doping documentary Icarus did, giving Netflix its first Oscar.
Miscellaneous Movie Marketing News
Cool feature here by AMPAS on the design process behind dozens of iconic movie posters.
The technology and entertainment industries are essentially joined at the hip.
This is from last month, but Snapchat is touting the role its Promoted Stories and other ad formats are playing in raising awareness of blockbuster films.
The Lonely Island shared the rough cut of a video for a song they were apparently asked to write for the Oscars about why blockbusters don’t get more nominations but which they claim was rejected for being impractical to produce.
Hulu is testing interactive ads that let viewers buy movie tickets with a few presses of the buttons on their remote control.
Netflix is bringing 30-second previews to its mobile app. Not only that but they’re presented as vertical video, the better to fit in with current form factor expectations of mobile users.
STX was such a fan of the work data marketing firm Movio did for its Den of Thieves release it’s signed a bigger deal with the agency.
Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.
Cinematic Slant 