The only thing that’s surprising about Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again coming out 10 years after the first one is that it took this long. My full recap of the movie’s marketing is up at The Hollywood Reporter now and you can read a few additional points here.
Media and Publicity
The cast and crew talked about the film on various occasions, usually while promoting other projects. It really started to get its own focus in interviews like this with Seyfried where she promised things were definitely being kicked up a notch across the board for the sequel.
Around the time of the CinemaCon presentation there was a feature LAT story about how a movie featuring characters like this – older women – is fairly unusual in the middle of the summer.
Overall
First off, 50 points taken from whatever screenwriter shameless cribbed the “I told many, many people” line seen in the trailer from “Sports Night.” I know it’s not a hugely original gag even there, but still…come one.
Considering the campaign is so unconcerned with selling anything resembling a story, I can’t imagine it was anything along those lines that held up production. More likely, in my mind, it was concern over how to make the use of the same handful of ABBA songs from the original movie (and stage production) without giving off the obvious impression of not caring at all.
Universal clearly believes the audience for this sequel will turn out for the spectacle of it all, much like people do for super hero movies. Instead of punching and flying and wisecracks, though, the pitch is costumes, musical sequences and drinking wine while lounging in exotic locations.
PICKING UP THE SPARE
Lily James talks here about how she got an American accent down and how she studied Meryl Streep’s line readings from the first movie to mimic her speaking patterns as much as possible.
Cher announced she has recorded and will release a whole album of ABBA covers to capitalize on her involvement with the movie and her time once more in the spotlight.
Christine Baranski, Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper both hit late-night talk shows to talk about working with Cher and even kind of the rest of the movie.
The producer of the original stage show had a chance to weigh in on the musical’s legacy, and the movie’s director talked about the cameos by two of ABBA’s original members.
Universal worked with an influencer marketing agency to coordinate a shot-for-shot remake of the original video for “Mamma Mia!” the song featuring a bunch of YouTube personalities.
Cinematic Slant 
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