Just how much influence can a comic-book movie trailer have? If we’re talking about the one for Watchmen, the answer is “A lot.”
Released last Thursday, the teaser for Zack Snyder’s adaptation quickly pushed the collection of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 miniseries up the Amazon.com bestseller list. There it sits in the No. 2 position, behind the fourth installment of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.
Last night USA Today released its weekly Top 150 Books chart, which tracks sales of all genres and formats. Within three days of the trailer’s debut, Watchmen had rocketed to No. 83. (The newspaper notes the box-office success of The Dark Knight also has renewed interest in the 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke, by Moore and Brian Bolland.)
But the Watchmen “trailer effect” doesn’t end with comics. According to RollingStone.com, the song appearing in the teaser — The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1997 single “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” — is now the No. 1 most-downloaded Smashing Pumpkins song on iTunes, and one of the Top 40 most-popular tracks overall.
Update: Retailer Brian Hibbs comments on the impact of the trailer
July 24th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Meanwhile, Killing Joke - which exists at Amazon in a deluxe hardcover - is ranked #22, no doubt thanks to Dark Knight.
A good week for Moore’s work, even if he hates the films and even if he deosn’t really care about the royalty checks.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Woah. Damnit DC needs to come out with a new print NOW
July 24th, 2008 at 10:20 am
It really is amazing how much buzz one trailer has generated! I had been planning on reading Watchmen for a while since so many of my fellow instructors use it in the classroom…After seeing The Dark Knight, I went to Barnes & Noble the next day to snag a copy since they always have plenty. Sold out. Every copy. I’ll try Books-a-Million later…I hope the movie delivers!
July 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
As it is with most products on the market today, all have the potential for company/consumer “greatness” if they can only capture that one elusive, but oh so important component of advertisement…Exposure! The results discussed in this article proves it. There were people who never cared for OR even heard about The WATCHMEN, but because of the trailer for the upcoming movie…people now are intrigued and motivated to discover the details of this graphic novel. Over the past 5 years, comic book publishers have been testing the waters of advertising comic book titles using animated trailers and now it seems there’s more attention being directed to this method of marketing, as well. As an animator of trailers/webisodes of comic book art, I am noticing a renewed interest and increased effort by publishing companies (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Virgin, IDW, etc.) to advertise comic book material on the web, by way of trailers and animated content, i.e., The WATCHMEN comic webisode. Some critics feel trailers and webisodes are a waste of time, while others conclude it is simply the next logical, progressive technique to display their product on the “WORLD” wide web. Whatever the general consensus, everyone agrees that EXPOSURE is a vital element needed to be remotely successful in this new cost conscious, economically strapped environment, in which we currently live and online games, webisodes and trailers (for both movies and comic books) are the latest and currently best ways to get the attention of consumers, via the Internet.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:47 am
MickF, there’s a non-Absolute hardcover due soon at $40 cover price. I pre-ordered that from DCBS (for $20) this week and sold my paperback on Amazon.