Continuing the Stardust craze, Chris (no relation) over at a site called Movie Marketing Madness looks at the various ways the film has been promoted, from posters to online plugs:
I honestly don’t know if Paramount knows exactly what to do with this movie. It’s not part of a series, it doesn’t feature a pre-pubescent kid as its hero and it doesn’t have overt or underlying Christian themes in it. That sets it apart from almost all the other sci-fi/fantasy films that have hit screens in the wake of The Lord of the Rings. That also means Paramount can’t lean back on some of the tactics that have become commonplace with these films, such as using church groups to get the word out.
It’s an interesting read. And it looks like they do this with just about every big movie that comes out, which may mean I’ll have to bookmark the site for future reference.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Great site. I had a feeling Stardust didn’t stand a chance the second I saw the first poster. I couldn’t get over how much it looked like the promo material for Eragon, a movie that didn’t exactly bomb but certainly didn’t have a ad campaign worth ripping off. You can see the Eragon poster here…
http://images.allmoviephoto.com/2006_Eragon/2006_eragon_wallpaper_002.jpg
Such a generic fantasy film template. I wonder if they would have done better with a painted, Drew Struzanesque poster. I think it would have given them more of that epic, Princess Bride-style classic feeling they were going for. Oh well. Here’s hoping Neil Gaiman will hits it big in Hollywood with Beowulf.