Posts Tagged "marketing"

*UPDATED* – Prometheus marketing hits Japan ahead of August 24th release

*UPDATED WITH VIDEO*

Incredibly, Prometheus has still not been released in a handful of countries.

This week the movie hits Germany, Austria and Switzerland, followed by Japan on the 24th of August, and Italy on the 14th September.

Following the marketing ploy used in Paris, Fox in Japan took over a disused subway station to advertise the movie there.

Here’s a video and a few photos of the display being set up:

Thanks to seeasea for the link!

Damon Lindelof talks about the Prometheus viral campaign and Twitter criticism

The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog caught up with Damon Lindelof, who told them about the genesis of the Prometheus viral campaign and his use of Twitter.

You can read the whole thing here, but there are a few snippets below:

How did you come up with the idea for these viral videos?

I was working on the script and the story with Ridley directly and this guy Michael Ellenberg who is a producer on the movie. Ridley was aware of “Lost” but Michael was a watcher of it, not just the show, but a lot of the stuff we did virally between the seasons, and the courtship of the fanbase primarily through events like Comic Con. I was aggressively tweeting by the last season of the show, so he understood the idea of a two-way street. He made it clear that Ridley wouldn’t be engaging in any of that, not for lack of caring what the fans thought. He doesn’t have a Twitter handle or even an email address…but he was open to the idea of engaging with the fan base and so the big question that emerged out of the gate was: What is this movie’s relationship to the original “Alien”? Is it a prequel? How is it a prequel? Is it an entirely original movie?

I thought that instead of us answering questions in mainstream media, was there a way to control the story by releasing content before the movie that just isn’t the trailer. They were like “What do you mean?” I said, “We can do some cool viral stuff.” And the best viral content stars the actors, the stars who are actually in the movie. I thought if we could talk Michael Fassbender into doing this, or Guy Pearce, that would be awesome. But we are going to have to have these ideas figured out by the time we are shooting the movie because that’s when we have those actors.

Do you think movie marketing is become more of a conversation?

Yes. That’s why we designed the content the way we did. Weyland’s TED talk is a talk to an audience, and the audience is a proxy for the audience that’s watching it. The “David 8” spot is a commercial, not for “Prometheus,” but for a robot you can’t actually buy. Sometimes when you put content out there and it’s just a scene from the movie it’s exactly the same experience you’d get in a movie theater. But I do think people, particularly when it comes to viral content, like content that’s talking directly to them, creating that level of interactivity.

I noticed that you’ve been responding mostly to negative comments [on Twitter] — do you like to do that?

I am amused if somebody says something cleverly negative about it. The mean negatives, there is nothing pleasant about that experience whatsoever for me. I try to not address it unless it’s so horrible that I feel the need to tell everybody who follows me, “Just so you know, there are people out there who says this.” If somebody says something positive it’s something I want to keep to myself.

Were you prepared for the opening results?

The tracking that they had been presenting me was well short of what we did opening weekend. I don’t know if they were just hedging, but I think between the R rating and opening against “Madagascar.” It was always “Madagascar” was going to win the weekend. So, $30-35 million was what they were hoping for…when they did $50 [million] I was surprised.

Prometheus is directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts. The film stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Patrick Wilson and Kate Dickie, and is now on release around the world.

Prometheus ‘audio puzzle’ (almost) unscrambled – not solved yet though!

So, following the release yesterday of a ‘damaged’ audio recording of the Prometheus crew, fans around the world have been trying to ‘repair’ it, and there are several ‘corrected’ versions now around, including one from one of our own industrious readers, which you can hear below.

As you’ll know by now, parts of the original recording were reversed, and it’s simply been a case of switching those back to play the right way round. However, we think there’s a bit more to it than that!

While all the audio is now intelligible, we reckon the dialogue has been cut to play in the wrong order – for example, it starts with a crew member in obvious pain, then cuts to nervous laughter, then a “maybe you should help me now, ok?”.

So, who can be first to get it all in the right order?

Prometheus is directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts. The film stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Patrick Wilson and Kate Dickie, and is due for release on June 8th 2012 in the USA, and June 1st 2012 in the UK.

*UPDATED* New Prometheus audio puzzle to test your brains!

*UPDATE* Some progress has been made on unscrambling the audio – check here for more details.

Fox have released the next part of their ‘Discovering Prometheus’ viral campaign, this time via Swiss site BlogBusters.

We we have is an ‘audio transmission’ featuring what sounds to be at least two characters having a pretty rough time. Some of the dialog also appears to be in reverse – can you figure it out?

Prometheus is directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts. The film stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Patrick Wilson and Kate Dickie, and is due for release on June 8th 2012 in the USA, and June 1st 2012 in the UK.