Tag: avengers infinity war

Picking Up the Spare – Sorry To Bother You, Skyscraper and More

Sorry to Bother You

The movie has generated a metric ton of stories such as this about code-switching and “white voice.” Annapurna Pictures leaned into that by releasing a featurette with Patton Oswalt and David Cross, who provide some of the white voices used by black characters in the film.

Star Lakeith Stanfield has engaged in a bit more media, including appearing on “Kimmel” to promote the movie.

Skyscraper

It was apparent in the film’s campaign, but the distinct lack of sense of humor was one (at least potential) reason the movie didn’t perform up to expectations at the box-office. While I haven’t seen it, the problem likely stems from how it adds the element of putting the hero’s wife and children in the middle of the action. That increases the stakes, but it also makes a wise-cracking protagonist odd and out of place. You’ll note that Die Hard, which the movie clearly was aspiring to be, avoided that.

Dwayne Johnson and director Rawson Marshall talk here about Neve Campbell’s character, who was all but missing completely from the campaign.

This is an interesting profile of Johnson and the clout he wields, including his formidable social media presence.

Also, the movie has come under some scrutiny as another example of Hollywood casting an able-bodied actor to play a disabled character, which is part of a bigger conversation around representation.

Avengers: Infinity War

While Marvel Studios isn’t at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, LEGO is bringing a life-size version of Thanos to the convention.

Ready Player One

The theatrical run is over for the movie but it’s freshly out on home video platforms and media, so Warner Bros. has brought costumes, props and a VR experience to San Diego Comic-Con.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

It’s not a big push, but Disney/Lucasfilm are including a life-size replica of the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit as seen in the movie to the Star Wars booth at San Diego Comic-Con.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot

Amazon released a bunch of new posters on Twitter that are much better than the low-effort theatrical one-sheet.

Jonah Hill showed up on “Kimmel” to talk about the movie and working with Phoenix.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

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.

Black Panther

Shuri, T’Challa’s sister and the breakout favorite character from the movie, is reportedly getting her own comic series.

Eighth Grade

Writer/director Bo Burnham continues to make the media rounds to talk up his movie, which is gearing up to be a word-of-mouth success. Also many people have pointed out this disconnect, which is that a few words and scenes that are going to be familiar to anyone in junior high have given the movie a rating designed to keep out anyone who’s actually in junior high.

The Equalizer 2

Denzel Washington addressed directly how this is his first sequel and why he’s long avoided doing them and how he tried to bring the feeling and emotion back to the character. Also, he and costar Ashton Sanders talk here about their on-screen dynamic.

Deadpool 2

Yeah, the Comic-Con stunts promoting the movie’s home video release are just about what you’d expect.

Picking Up the Spare: Ant-Man and The Wasp, Deadpool 2 and More

Ant-Man and The Wasp

The movie’s successful opening weekend let it run a “#1 movie in the world” TV spot to tout how well it was received.

The search for Janet Van Dyne was almost completely missing from the campaign but now that the movie is out, Marvel released this short video emphasizing it and focusing the Quantum Realm where she disappeared years ago.

Deadpool 2

Fox is promoting the release of the “Uncut” home video release with both a TV spot and a recently-announced screening at San Diego Comic-Con next week. That home video release will include a children’s book that’s absolutely unfit for children.

Also at SDCC, LEGO will be giving away an exclusive “Sheriff Deadpool” minifigure that’s not specifically tied to the movie but is still part of everyone’s general promotions for Deadpool.

Leave No Trace

There’s a new TV spot designed to show off some of the positive reviews the movie has received and help it build on very solid word of mouth.

Avengers: Infinity War

The 10th anniversary celebration that was tied to the movie’s release continues with the release of 10 more character posters to mark the occasion.

Skyscraper

Costar Bryon Mann has received a bit more attention in the last few days, with a couple interviews that let him talk about his career, working in his home city of Hong Kong as well as the movie specifically.

Dwayne Johnson started making the late night talk show rounds in the last couple days, including an appearance on “Colbert.”

Hotel Transylvania 3

Kathryn Hahn has made a few media appearances recently, showing up on “Kimmel” to tell stories and promote the movie a bit.

Blade Runner 2049

The movie itself didn’t take off to massive success, but it apparently opened the door to new stories that will be told in comics and books.

Eighth Grade

There’s been a whole wave of stories about writer/director Bo Burnham and his mission to get the movie made and tell the story in a realistic and respectful way. You can see instances of this on Indiewire, Buzzfeed, Variety just to name a few.

The Kissing Booth

The New York Times goes into why the movie has turned out to be so popular, including how Netflix tried to not overhype it.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Tag, Superfly and More

Superfly

More from Future on the soundtrack he produced and curated, which was a big part of the marketing campaign, here. Director X has also been giving interviews like this now that the movie is out.

Also recommended is this compare/contrast of this album with that of the original.

Tag

Star Jeremy Renner’s broken arms are part of this interview with director Jeff Tomsic where he talks about all the challenges he had making the movie.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Star Thandie Newton talked more here about the dress she wore to the premiere featuring the faces of the characters of color in the franchise to date.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

More on the Kellogg’s promotion for the movie here.

The movie is the next release to get the AR treatment from Moviebill, which is once again handing out periodicals to Regal Cinemas audiences that can be scanned using the Regal app to unlock exclusive content, including interviews (in print and AR format) with star Bryce Dallas Howard and director J.A. Bayona, a welcome message from star Chris Pratt, an interactive “dino-lab” and a sample of the dinosaurs available in the Jurassic World Alive, the location-based AR mobile game developed by Ludia.

That game is built on location and other data from Google Maps, which is helping to promote both the game and the services behind it.

Daniella Pineda has received a few profiles like this after being identified as the breakout newcomer – or at least largely unknown – in the movie. That makes the reports that a scene clearly identifying her as LGBTQ was cut, the latest instance of that happening in a major studio franchise film, somewhat awkward.

There’s also a bit of extra attention coming to co-star Justice Smith.

Director J.A. Bayona was never the focus of much of the press in advance of the movie’s release, but there was an interview with him here and another one here.

First Reformed

More from director Paul Schrader on the film’s disturbing characters and situations as well as his feelings and thoughts on God.

Gotti

The campaign for this is one I let go by me because it seemed like a terrible mess and the post-release developments have only reinforced that decision. Here are some examples:

  • The studio, along with MoviePass (which invested in the film), published a really weird and insulting Tweet positioning critics giving it a negative review as enemies of the common folk.
  • That same message was conveyed in push notifications to MoviePass mobile users and is what the movie’s marketing team is selling as they float the idea Rotten Tomatoes is artificially keeping its score down.
  • There’s speculation that the disconnect between that score and a strangely high audience ranking could be because of a bot/fake account campaign being mounted, something the studio denies.

Wonder Woman

As the marketing for the sequel ramps up, Turner Ignite placed a paid article on Ad Age about how Turner networks and shows helped sell the first movie to audiences.

Lady Bird

Amazon promoted the movie’s availability on its streaming service with a Father’s Day clip featuring some of Tracy Letts’ wonderfully-delivered lines from the movie.

The Incredibles 2

More from costar Holly Hunter in this brief interview.

A Wrinkle In Time

It seems Disney used the tactic of pairing this movie, which is already on home video, with The Incredibles 2 at drive-in theaters around the country to help it eek past the $100m mark.

Avengers: Infinity War / Deadpool 2

Josh Brolin is interviewed about how popular he is right now and how that kind of bothers and worries him.

Boundaries

OK, I’ll grant you that co-star Peter Fonda’s Tweet about Bannon Trump was in poor taste, but right now the last person who should be asserting any sort of moral highground on literally any issue at all is Donald Trump Jr. Indiewire has the whole recap, including Sony Classics’ position on the matter.

Christopher Plummer’s character was based in part on the real life grandfather of director Shana Feste.

The Catcher Was a Spy

The New York Times delves into the real history of Moe Berg, played by Paul Rudd in the movie.

Black Panther

An exhibit of the movie’s costumes will be on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Dundee

No, it wasn’t a real movie, but the campaign for Tourism Australia that sure looked like a movie’s marketing push just won multiple awards at the Cannes Social Lions.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – American Animals, Adrift and More

Adrift

New interviews with both star Shailene Woodley and director Baltasar Kormákur offer insights into the story and process of making the movie, though the latter contains significant spoilers so beware.

American Animals

The narrative that’s emerging of how MoviePass, which partnered to release the film as its first move into film distribution, helped the film succeed is that it used its own platform to heavily promote the film, utilizing the user data it has to target ads. If I’m *any* other distributor right now I’m pretty honked off.

Both the cast and crew and the real people the actors are playing are interviewed here about the blurring of fact and fiction in the movie.

Girls Trip

Details on a creative campaign for the movie involving Snoop Dogg were shared here by Viacom, which ran that campaign across some of its networks and platforms.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

To the surprise of [looks around quickly] literally no one, a Wall Street analyst has blamed the marketing for the movie’s lackluster box-office results. He’s like 27% right, in that the marketing campaign was dictated largely by the release schedule, which was dictated by the other Star Wars movies coming out before and after it.

There’s a trailer for the Solo-related material coming to Star Wars: Battlefront II.

First Reformed

Ethan Hawke continues to make the press rounds to talk about the movie, which keeps getting positive reviews and buzz.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

All of you jackweeds who have hijacked Star Wars fandom to disseminate your backwards-thinking, anti-women, regressive worldview and mindset: Please get off my franchise. There is no place here for you and never was. Leave. Now.

Ocean’s 8

More from Anne Hathaway and others in the cast here about how they hope the movie will help burst the myth that female-led movies are question marks theatrically.

Another quick profile of breakout star Awkwafina here. And Helena Bonham Carter is finally getting some attention with a profile where she talks about how fun it was to work on a light caper movie.

Hearts Beat Loud

Nick Offerman has done a bit of press in the last few days to promote the movie, which is nice to see.

Tag

Jeez, even Annabelle Wallis has been forced to talk about Jeremy Renner’s broken arms during her portion of the publicity cycle. Hamm and Helms have also done a bit more publicity.

A clip from the movie was played in an episode of Machinima’s “Inside Gaming” to try and reach that crowd.

Nice profile of co-star Jake Johnson here at GQ. And there’s more from Hannibal Buress as well as an interview with the comedian.

A Kid Like Jake

Claire Danes has continued to do press for the film and talk about the issues raised in the story.

Avengers: Infinity War

Viacom offers details on a creative execution involving Comedy Central’s show with Jordan Klepper.

The Incredibles 2

Good story here about how Pixar got the band back together for the sequel after over a decade.

Superfly

Apparently star Trevor Jackson initially rejected as the lead because it was felt he was too young. More about how he got involved in the movie here.

The Kissing Booth

I know I didn’t give this movie a full campaign review, but that’s largely because it didn’t get a full campaign from Netflix. That’s too bad since it seems like the story’s origins on story-sharing website Wattpad seems like it would have been a decent hook for the press.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Deadpool 2, On Chesi Beach and More

Deadpool 2

Fox has extended the social media presence of Peter, the non-powered member of the team Deadpool assembles, adding a LinkedIn profile that the studio has been advertising on Twitter to get people’s attention. He’s even been writing blog posts.

The constant stream of Green Lantern cracks in this and the first movie have finally prompted Warner Bros. to (jokingly) ask for the ring back, to which Ryan Reynolds had a thoroughly appropriate response.

Seems at least one British movie critic got a Royal Wedding-themed invitation to see the movie, which is a nice touch.

Kristina Monllos at Adweek adds her own recap of the movie’s campaign to the growing list. And Ashley Rodriguez has one at Quartz.

I’m not linking to them because there are a lot of spoilers, but there’s a whole series of stories that have come out in the last week that have not only gone in-depth on some cameos in the film but talked about how the cast and crew intentionally shot scenes for the trailers that weren’t going to be in the movie. The point of the latter was to run what amounts to a fake out campaign to throw people off the scent of the actual story and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that.

Rebecca Rubin at THR is wondering out loud if the movie’s success will lead to more R-rated super hero movies. I maintain the same position I did last year that this is something that may be experimented with from time to time but won’t become “normal” and certainly won’t be adopted by Marvel Studios or even WB/DC.

There wasn’t much of a focus on Julian Dennison, the actor that plays Rusty in this movie and who broke out in The Hunt For The Wilderpeople a few years ago, but that’s changed with a few talk show appearances and this feature profile where he talks about coming into a super hero film and his young career to date. Also, this look at how his casting represents a solid move into diversity for the genre.

Artist boneface took to Twitter to show off some poster art he’d been commissioned by Fox to create, though he admitted he wasn’t sure what the studio ultimately had in mind for his work.

Finally, the team shared a “thank you” video to fans recutting footage from the movie as a sitcom opening montage using the music of “The Golden Girls” because of course.

On Chesil Beach

More here about how this isn’t the first time Saoirse Ronan has shown up in a movie based on an Ian McEwan book as the two talk about finding themselves on the same project again.

First Reformed

A solid feature profile of writer director Paul Schrader at GQ in which he talks about not just this movie but his extensive and noteworthy career as a whole.

You Were Never Really Here

Amazon Studios put out a short promo video acknowledging this was one of two movies starring Joaquin Phoenix-starring movies it was distributing this year.

Life of the Party

Adria Arjona, who plays Melissa McCarthy’s daughter in the film, talks more here about working with the veteran actor and what she learned just by being in the room with her.

Mary Shelley

Director Haifaa al-Mansour finally got a profile of her own where she talks about getting involved in the story and how she broke into the industry.

Avengers: Infinity War

Moviebill, the company that put those AR-enhanced magazines in the hands of opening week moviegoers at Regal Cinemas, is reporting that with 1 million copies distributed there were 2 million scans that weekend, meaning at least some people were repeatedly going back to the Regal app to view additional material.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

It’s the most wonderful time of the year because Matt Singer at ScreenCrush chronicled his day spent eating the entire movie-themed menu at Denny’s, as did Heather Mason at SyfyWire.

The Chicago Tribune profiles local native Bradford Young about how his upbringing in the city influenced the style and attitude he brought to his work as cinematographer on the movie.

While it’s not specific to the movie, both The Hollywood Reporter and Film School Rejects use the occasion to talk with Perry King, who gave voice to Han Solo in the NPR-produced radio drama adaptations of all three of the Original Trilogy movies.

Super Troopers 2

I think I missed this earlier, but Vice talks about the crowdfunding that got the movie made and the subsequent data that went into the marketing.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Life of the Party, The Seagull, Deadpool 2 and More

Life of the Party

Writer/director Ben Falcone talks here about creating the story of the movie with wife Melissa McCarthy.

The Seagull

Star Annette Bening and production designer Jane Musky walk through the house that serves as the main setting of the story.

Deadpool 2

Lots more has happened since my recap column went up at THR.

There’s a Deadpool-sponsored “80s Smash Hits” playlist at Spotify that’s totally in keeping with the character’s musical tastes and which basically sounds like the radio I grew up on.

The Merc showed up on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to try and get on the show to promote the movie and yeah, Ryan Reynolds might be a comedic genius.

Fox was one of the first advertisers to use Snapchat’s new unskippable six-second video ads to make sure that audience was aware the movie was coming out.

Carl from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” briefly came back in a commercial aired, of course, on Adult Swim where he claimed he was Deadpool.

Another IMAX-exclusive promotional spot featured a lot of new footage from the movie.

Jeff Beer at Fast Company has his own recap of the movie’s marketing efforts that’s worth checking out, as does John McCarthy at The Drum.

Beer also caught a couple secret messages from Deadpool in the metadata of the site for Trolli, the gummy company that had a 7-Eleven-exclusive cross promotion with the movie.

Social media monitoring and management company Sprinklr analyzed online buzz for Deadpool 2 and compared it to both the first Deadpool and this year’s Avengers: Infinity War. Here’s how things stacked up:

  • Avengers – Infinity War (3/25/18-4/25/18): 1.3m mentions of #AvengersInfinityWar or #Avengers
  • Deadpool 2 (4/10/18- 5/10/18): 534,600 mentions of #Deadpool, #Deadpool 2 or #DP2
  • Deadpool (1/10/16- 2/10/16): 395,000 mentions of #Deadpool

Walmart offered a bunch of Blu-rays of movies like Logan, Office Space and others with slipcovers featuring Deadpool recreating the posters of the movie.

The jabs at Avengers continued in this video, where Deadpool recounts the first 10 years of his own cinematic universe, a decade that wasn’t quite as jam-packed as that other one.

Additional interviews have come out with the movie’s director and screenwriters, all of whom talk about how they approached the character and story. There was also a feature on Stefan Kapicic, who plays Colossus in this film as well as in the original, about his performance, how you never see his actual face and more.

Justice League

Henry Cavill says what everyone else was thinking last year, that it was a ridiculous conceit to hide Superman in the movie’s marketing since not only was he on the publicity tour but *of course* the character was going to come back. Plus, he was on like 22% of the marketing materials anyway, especially the cross-promotional stuff.

Avengers: Infinity War

More on the partnership with Little Free Library here.

Black Panther

There’s a new – and very cool – video for “Pray For Me” from Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd featuring footage from the movie as well as some slick animation.

Speed Racer

Speed Racer is the movie everyone champions on Twitter, heralding it as a genius film under-appreciated in its time. The 10th anniversary of release is bringing with it a whole new wave of stories like this along those lines.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Overboard, Avengers and More

Overboard

More from star Eugenio Derbez at Buzzfeed about how he embraced the role offered by gender-swapping the characters largely because it afforded him an opportunity to expand the way Latino characters are represented on screen.

Avengers: Infinity War

Thanos is coming to the popular game Fortnite, with players vying in a grand tournament for control of the Infinity Gauntlet, ultimately transforming into the villain. Read more about it and watch a gameplay video here.

BrandChannel interviews the CMO of Quicken Loans about that company’s cross-promotional efforts with the movie.

Lean on Pete

I didn’t get around to reviewing the marketing for The Rider, but both represented movies that, as Sam Rigby at Quartz points out, revisit that unique bond between man and horse.

Tully

Costar Mackenzie Davis has been getting a lot of accolades for her performance in the film and finally gets a feature spotlight profile of her own to help keep word-of-mouth going.

Duck Butter

Shawkat, Costa and others talk here about the process of not only writing the movie but filming a good number of sex scenes and what each one means about where the characters are at in the story.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Duck Butter, Tully and More

Duck Butter

An interview with Shawkat here that touches on the story she wanted to tell in the movie and how it’s part of a trend of films that make the drama in queer and other non-hetero relationships absolutely normal and not at all out of the ordinary or especially overwrought.

Tully

Charlize Theron talks here about how she got involved in the film and what it was like adjusting to the role, including the physical demands it necessitated.

Writer Diablo Cody spoke more here about how her own experiences with motherhood helped her craft the story in a real and relatable way.

Both of the ladies were interviewed here about how they wanted to tell a more realistic story of motherhood than most movies portray.

Avengers: Infinity War

Tessa Thompson, who played Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, poked fun at that character’s absence in Infinity War on Twitter.

Digital outdoor ads at New York City bus stops, though an integration with Moviefone, offered those waiting for their ride showtimes at nearby theaters.

Overboard

Derbez and Faris both spoke about how they approached the movie, him as someone eager for an opportunity to play a role different from what he’s usually offered and her as someone reluctant to infringe on the memory of the original.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Picking Up the Spare – Avengers: Infinity War, I Feel Pretty

Avengers: Infinity War

The #thanosdemandsyoursilence no spoiler thing that started out as kind of a joke by the movie’s directors was turned into a PSA featuring many of the movie’s stars just as first reviews were starting to hit the web.

I Feel Pretty

She’s almost completely missing from the campaign, but apparently Michelle Williams is not only in the film but is the best thing about it. There have been a number of stories like this that talk about her character, wardrobe and more.

Rebecca Jennings at Racked nicely sums up the back-and-forth that’s happened over the last week as various people defend the movie and its story or take serious issue with it. Basically it sounds like whatever issues you bring into the film are what you’ll see reflected in it.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Avengers: Infinity War – Marketing Recap

avengers infinity war poster 2And now, the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I’ll say it clear

I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain

If you’re looking for my usual marketing recap on Avengers: Infinity War, this week’s biggest release, you’ll find it spread across two outlets.

For The Hollywood Reporter I covered the primary marketing elements such as posters, trailers and TV spots. Meanwhile over at Adweek I went a bit more in-depth than usual on the movie’s promotional partnerships and the efforts supporting those partnerships.

Even with all that there were some elements I usually include that didn’t make into either of those two pieces. So, using those as starting points, here’s the rest of what the marketing campaign looked like.

Continue reading “Avengers: Infinity War – Marketing Recap”