The Best- And Worst-Marketed Movies Of Summer 2013
Summer is officially over as of today, with the last potentially big releases (The World’s End, You’re Next, and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones) landing with relative whimpers. This will be the first of what I hope are a handful of articles detailing the various successes and failures of the just-completed summer movie season. For the moment we’re going to look at marketing campaigns for the various major releases between May and August. What follows is a discussion of what I consider to be the best and worst marketing campaigns from the summer. Now what I absolutely must emphasize is this isn’t just a list of successful marketing campaigns but at least an acknowledgment of quality where it applies. So without further ado…
The worst: Star Trek Into Darkness
For the record, with $457 million worldwide, Star Trek Into Darkness is no flop and will eventually make money once Trekkies buy the Blu Rays. But neither was it the kind of sequel that explodes out of the gate due to the goodwill of its predecessor. Much of the extra $68 million earned over Star Trek is due to inflation and the 3D price bump, making this sequel closer to G.I. Joe: Retaliation than Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. So what happened? Well, J.J. Abrams and company shoehorned a major villain from the original series for little reason other than marketability and then spent the next year or so lying to everyone and claiming said villain wasn’t in the picture. Bad Robot wrecked their own movie by inserting a “in name only” variation on a classic Trek villain seemingly for fan service only to kneecap the marketing department by disallowing them to market said fan service.
Abrams’s so-called ‘mystery box’ turned what should have merely a case of “I don’t want to divulge the whole movie in trailers and clips” into promises of shocking revelations and shattering plot twists. What we got was the big reveal everyone expected, as well as generic ‘dark sequel’ plot turns, and the reversal of an iconic Star Trek moment that everyone predicted years ago. With no added value elements to sell, Paramount was forced to craft a generic campaign based around Benedict Cumberbatch as “Generic Bad Guy”, so the excitement never took hold. The film opened to a fine $83 million in four days, or about what the first one opened to ($79.5m) without 3D. This was worse than failing to increase audience anticipation for a sequel and worse than merely teasing an empty mystery box. This was adding to the idea that merely withholding basic story elements is tantamount to promising stunning plot twists. Oh, and it made fans and general moviegoers less excited about Star Trek 2 than they were four, three, or even two years ago.
The best: The Great Gatsby
By all rights this one should have flopped. Warner Bros. moved it from December, 2012 to May, 2013, on arguably the worst weekend of the month to boot. With months of concerned buzz, a release date (the second weekend of summer) famous for producing high profile flops, and relatively mediocre reviews, it could be argued that Warner Bros. was merely holding its breath and hoping for international figures to save the day. But through sheer force of will, Warner Bros. sold this 130 minute star-driven period piece drama as a genuine blockbuster.
They sold DiCaprio’s star power in a rare heartthrob turn. They sold the glitz, the glamour, and the costumes. They set it all to contemporary music to make it seem somewhat modern, while offering both an indulgence in and a criticism of the proverbial 1%. Against all odds, the saturation worked, and The Great Gatsby opened with $51 million, eventually earning $144 million in American alone. Ironically, it only made slightly more overseas. It earned $186 million, or 56% of its total, overseas, compared to the 68% overseas hauls of Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge and the 76% overseas total of Australia. With $344 million worldwide for the $105 million picture, Warner Bros. marketing all earned bonuses during that second weekend in May for turning what could have been a disaster into an outright triumph.
In Pictures: Summer 2013′s Winners & Losers At The Box Office
The worst: Fast & Furious 6
Okay, yes the film opened with $122 million over Memorial Day weekend and looks to be heading towards $800 million worldwide. It will be Universal’s third-biggest grosser ever behind Despicable Me 2 and Jurassic Park. But by god, they could have arguably made just as much money anyway without giving away the entire movie in one spoiler-ific trailer after another. Things started off grim with the Super Bowl spot, which surely wowed the crowd, but did so by revealing the big climactic image of the picture as well as a major first-act plot turn. A three-minute trailer soon followed which explicitly laid out the plot beat-by-beat while revealing more action money shots. Another plot-centric trailer was released in April, with little purpose except to spoil more of the very things audiences wanted to see.
By the time audiences saw the film, they realized that they had in fact seen pretty much every major action beat in the film, along with the vast majority of the plot turns to boot. It’s tough to argue with success, but Universal had the good will of Fast Five to win the honorable way. They had more than enough money shots to tease a few while hiding the rest, and the fans that loved the franchise or discovered it through Fast Five would have shown up just as excited. Top that off with confirmation of the major villain and the inciting plot turn for the next installment well before the sixth film’s release, and Fast & Furious 6 represents much of what’s wrong with modern marketing campaigns.
The best: Man Of Steel
As I and others say, opening weekend is about marketing, not quality. So while Man Of Steel turned out to be brutally front loaded and not all that popular with moviegoers, to the point where Warner Bros. is turning it into a backdoor pilot for a Batman franchise, few can argue with the success of a $128 million 3.25 day opening weekend, the second-biggest on record for a non-sequel behind The Hunger Games‘s $152 million debut. Warner Bros. spent a solid year selling gravitas and seriousness of purpose, promising a Superman film that would be a towering achievement in the realm of comic book cinema and restore the Man of Steel to the top of the superhero mountain. They sold their grown-up friendly cast (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Amy Adams) to give the film credibility with general audiences, while promising the the melancholy Americana of a Terrence Malick film combined with the raw emotionalism of a Lord of the Rings picture while teasing superhero action of a seemingly unparalleled scale and scope.
Obviously the movie didn’t quite deliver on those terms, so kudos for successful fraud, which is sometimes what a marketing campaign is. But the gambit worked like a charm for those first 3.25 days. The trailers are still heart-wrenching and inspiring in ways that the movie is not, and the Hans Zimmer themes still bring about slight sorrow for a grand Superman film that will now never be. And kudos for keeping clips and trailers to a relative minimum, although the last two online-only spoils were arguably a bridge too far. But even those trailers teased rather than spoiled, and most audiences went into Man Of Steel with little idea of what the second and third acts of the film would look or feel like. No matter my thoughts on the final product, or the film’s swift decline after opening weekend, Warner Bros. successfully sold the Superman picture that fans had been waiting their whole lives to see. Come what may, we’ll still have those trailers…
The worst: White House Down
Roland Emmerich’s Die Hard in the White House thriller was simply one of the best and most satisfying popcorn entertainments of the summer and easily the best Die Hard knock-off since Air Force One if not Speed. To the extent that I take box office returns personally, I was genuinely disappointed that audiences didn’t catch onto this one either here or abroad. But I suppose that wasn’t surprising when the film’s marketing campaign basically hid the film’s best ingredients. Sony earns the demerit for basically hiding the sheer quality of the product, turning it (far too late in the campaign thanks to a late embargo) into a “No, wait, it’s actually good!” film.
If you went only by the two trailers and even the four-minute extended trailer, you’d never know that the film starred the likes of James Woods, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins or that Maggie Gyllenhaal was basically a third lead to Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. The marketing hid both the film’s superb cast and the richly entertaining character interaction and mostly successful attempts at humor. It hid the film’s topical and politically-relevant narrative, offering little hint at the surprisingly explicit liberalism on display behind merely having Jamie Foxx play the president. The trailers sold Channing Tatum protecting Jamie Foxx from faceless and purposeless villains. They sold a young daughter in peril without selling the genuine chemistry that Tatum and Joey King shared together.
They sold the gravy and potatoes while hiding the presence of beef. If you want grownups to see your movie, it helps to fashion a campaign that highlights said grown up actors who appear in your picture along with actual plot and character interaction. Perhaps overcompensating to withhold certain first-act plot turns that everyone guessed anyway, Sony hid the film’s best asset: It was a genuinely engaging old-school action film that put as much premium on good actors talking to each as it did on stuff blowing up. White House Down was surprisingly terrific, but surprisingly good is a problem when you live or die based on opening weekend.
The best: World War Z
Paramount’s strategy this summer was a simple one: “Keep moving forward”. The film was plagued by high-profile stories of behind-the-scenes turmoil, massive reshoots, and budget overruns. But Paramount correctly knew that audiences either didn’t know about those stories or didn’t care about them. Audiences who wanted to see a big-budget Brad Pitt zombie film were darn-well going to see a Brad Pitt zombie film as long as it looked worth the price of admission. So they just ignored the bad press and damned the torpedoes. More importantly, they used the bad press to create a narrative of low expectations.
They screened the film for general moviegoers to create a “Hey, it’s pretty good!” consensus, then sent Brad Pitt around the country to pop in at various word-of-mouth screenings in order to keep the film’s press relatively positive. They bought further publicity with that possibly groundbreaking “mega-ticket” gimmick, which allowed audiences to pay $50 for a sneak preview which included a digital copy download and various other goodies. Paramount just kept plugging away. By the time opening weekend rolled around, the critical consensus was along the lines of “Hey, it’s not that bad!” which read like raves for a media expecting a butchered disaster.
By the time opening weekend rolled along, the film was primed to play as a $200 million+ CGI thriller being sold as glorified counter-programming to superheroes and CGI animated films. A strange concept, but it worked, and the film debuted with a smashing $66 million, one of the biggest debuts of all-time for a star vehicle and a stunning result if you believed Paramount’s “expectations” of $35 million. The picture was loved by few but also hated by few, and it became the proverbial second-choice pick for much of the summer. The picture sits at $198 million domestic and $526 million worldwide, both being personal bests for Brad Pitt. This could have been a disaster, but Paramount knew they had the marketing goods to sell it to general audiences who didn’t care about the inside baseball drama and just wanted to see Brad Pitt run away from zombies.
The Worst: The Lone Ranger
There were a lot of mistakes made in all aspects of this film’s production and marketing, which is ironic as it’s one of the more daring and challenging blockbusters of the year, and a better film than its reputation suggests. Still, the cardinal sin that Disney committed with this one is failing to put their best foot forward. I write quite a bit about studios unleashing too many trailers, too many clips, and too many TV spots on the road to theatrical release, and this one was a prime example. The Lone Ranger cut a terrific trailer just over two months prior to its release. The problem is that it was the third theatrical trailer, fourth if you count the high-profile Super Bowl ad, released between October 2012 and April 2013.
The fourth and final trailer, for The Lone Ranger successfully sells the film’s humor and quirk, along with just the right dollop of drama and adventure. It successfully sells the iconic nature of its title character, the classic hero embarking on the first of many grand journeys, along with highlighting snippets of the film’s superb opening and closing action sequences. We’ll never know if The Lone Ranger could have been a hit under different circumstances (a shorter and tighter film focused on the drama rather than comedy would have helped), but Disney dropped the ball at the very least by releasing three mediocre previews in succession before finally getting it right the fourth time around.
The average moviegoer doesn’t see every movie that comes out on a given weekend. So if the only trailer they saw for The Lone Ranger was one of the three lesser previews, then that would likely be their final impression of the film going into opening weekend. Having a great final trailer matters less if you’ve been exposing audiences to mediocre clips for months on end. Either Disney should have cut that final trailer earlier and just let it play for a few months, or they should have help back the campaign until they were good and ready. Disney made a bad first impression and too few moviegoers saw the late-in-the-game course correction for it to matter.
In Pictures: Summer 2013′s Winners & Losers At The Box Office
The best: Iron Man 3
If backed into a corner, I’d say that Iron Man 3 was the very best popcorn film of the summer. It is smart, witty, exciting, and full of genuine crowd pleasing entertainment value and actual character development that still provides the big-budget thrills with a dash of incredibly insightful political commentary. But more importantly for this discussion, it is easily the best marketed film of the summer, if not the year. And yes, Disney could have put up a black poster than merely said Iron Man 3 and still probably could have cleared $1 billion worldwide. Heck, if they had done that, I probably still would have crowned it as the best marketing job of the summer for wholly different reasons. But Disney pulled off a neat trick. They used the expected marketing paradigm to hide the film while seemingly giving away the game. I admittedly complained back in April that it seemed like Disney/Marvel was doing the usual “spoil everything!” approach prior to the film’s international release. A month later I joyously realized I had been tricked.
No explicit spoilers here, but what Disney/Marvel did was give red meat to the spoiler crowd as a distraction, giving away things that seemed to be major elements of the film’s narrative while offering not a single hint of the year’s very best plot twist. They did the usual saturation campaign, offering up trailers with Tony Stark’s house exploding, sequences of Pepper Potts donning the Iron Man suit, and revealing nearly the entire mid-air rescue sequence in online clip form. They successfully created the impression that they were giving away the film’s big moments in order to entice those who would be buying tickets anyway. They played into the cliches of sequel marketing, centering on the main villain (The Mandarin) and the well-known actor who played him (Ben Kingsley) while teasing a red herring of a major character death that didn’t happen. It was only after audiences sat in their theater seats and actually saw the film that they realized how little of the film had actually been revealed.
What’s great about the film is how it subverted our expectations about what a blockbuster sequel is supposed to be and what a post-9/11 commentary is supposed to say. What’s great about the marketing campaign is how it too subverted our expectations by seemingly indulging in the very worst kind of no-stone-unturned marketing. We expect these marketing campaigns to basically give away the store, so we took what we saw at face value. Unlike a certain big summer sequel mentioned above, instead of proclaiming to the world that Iron Man 3 has SHOCKING secrets and STUNNING surprises and daring the audience to guess them prior to release, Disney kept their mouth shut (and thankfully instructed the cast/crew to do the same) while seemingly selling the same old blockbuster franchise sequel formula. Not only did Disney/Marvel successfully keep the major story beats of Iron Man 3 hidden from everyone who covers the geek film industry, they successfully hid the very notion that the film would have such surprises. For using the oft-derided saturation marketing techniques as a giant smokescreen, Disney’s Iron Man 3 wins the unofficial prize for best marketing campaign of the year.
There are other campaigns that deserve a tip of the hat for one reason or another. Universal had a terrific premise to sell with The Purge. Warner Bros. did the usual “sell the religious horror film to religious communities” shtick with The Conjuring while screening the film out the wazoo to build word-of-mouth. Universal also based its Despicable Me 2 campaign mostly around the minions, which was successful but also pretty obvious. Lionsgate/Summit was able to open the fun and buzzy Now You See Me and the film itself did the rest to become the season’s big sleeper hit. 20th Century Fox kept cool and just sold the low-key qualities of The Wolverine. It played like an X-Men film (solid debut, massive drops), but they got it out at the door even while fighting the perception that a $53 million debut was somehow a “flop”.
I still think Sony should have sold M. Night Shyamalan for After Earth, as it would have at least made the film look less generic and may have increased curiosity. The campaigns of R.I.P.D. and The Hangover part 3 were among many that did what they could with the subpar products they were stuck with, and The Hangover 3 was at least saved by strong overseas business. 20th Century Fox’s selling of The Internship purely by referencing The Wedding Crashers, the tagline was “Crash the System”, which had nothing to do with the movie itself, had the stink of desperation. Red 2 was arguably doomed from the start, but it also featured one of the least enjoyable trailers of the season, actually turning me off from a film that I otherwise was interested in. Finally, Warner Bros. did what they could with Pacific Rim, but they were stuck with a film without a ton of character beats and merely had to sell the mayhem and try to convince people that it wasn’t a Transformers rip-off. Fortunately China saved their butts, as the film is about to be the rare picture to cross $400 million worldwide while barely $100 million domestic.
And that’s a wrap for this specific portion of the summer movie summary. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on the marketing campaigns waged in the just-completed summer movie season. Because remember, even when the movies disappoint, they sure make for some great trailers…