THB #344: Summer Marketing Scorecard (Part 1 of 2)

When I had the notion of rating the movie marketing for this summer, I thought it would be easy. But it’s not. There are so many conflicting pieces of the puzzle.

The ultimate scorecard is box office. There is no denying this, fair or not. But that isn’t what I’m really interested in with this exercise.

With 5 $100 million domestic movies this summer so far, my sense is that more than half are on the lower side of the group, in terms of the marketing, even as relative box office winners.

That said, especially after going through a summer’s worth of marketing materials, my respect for all of these marketing departments is enormous. My criticism is from the outside. There are a ton of variables that inhibit the best work of these departments. It’s never as simple as “blame marketing.” Of course, my praise will require no explanation or excuse… that will seem obvious, if not stated boldly enough. (ha.)

There are 5 releases this summer so far of over 2000 screens that I am not even including because - for whatever reasons - the titles barely tipped the awareness scale. (The Machine, Book Club: The Next Chapter, Love Again, Kandahar, About My Father) Some of the titles got some publicity footing… but on pure marketing power - even with a massive standee for The Machine in a top spot at some AMCs and Book Club 2 doing $17m domestic - pretty much flat lines.

I am also going to push aside The Boogeyman and Insidious: The Red Door, as I don’t have a clear sense of how their marketing did or will work. Boogeyman will outgross last September’s Barbarian, both 20th projects released by Disney, though it doesn’t seem the kind of publicity-first triumph by the studio that Barbarian was. 1000 more screens and a June release date for Boogeyman show a bravado that Barbarian was not accorded… most likely in response to Barbarian’s success.

That leaves 24 titles, which are split into the top (13) and the bottom (11). People love numbered lists, but I will avoid that, except for the best and the worst.

It concerns me, as regards fairness, that the majority of the top group are unreleased films while the majority of the bottom group have been released (or will be by the end of the week). Confirmation bias is not a non-issue and I worry about it in categorizing most of these releases after the fact.

I’m structuring this with a trailer for each film, but this is not a summer trailer review. I consider the trailers to be the centerpiece of all but a very few publicity-driven wide releases in this period. The TV spots are almost always some form of cut-down. They are often part of “the close,” which is now hands-off/eyes-off, as people purchase tickets online.

THE BOTTOM GROUP

The August Titles

The Last Voyage of the Demeter - This is a complicated one. You start with an unhelpful title. It accurately describes the film, but what is it telling the audience? The campaign has evolved through the last few months, most likely as new effects shots have been completed for their trailers. As they have dropped each trailer, it has become clearer that this is more an Agatha Christie with a vampire than a sea movie. This could move into the Top Group in the next month… we’ll see. But right now, it’s one of the last three movies of August that seems like a bit of a dump… even though I don’t really believe that is the studio’s intention.

Strays - I am a sure-fire audience member for this movie. Last summer comedies from Universal almost always win me over. Lord/Miller is a win. Will Ferrell is a win. Cute animals cursing is a way to my heart. But I am mezzo-mezzo on this film as of this point. Part of my sense of it is that Universal is usually very aggressive with these August comedies… not so much on this. I don’t expect a new trailer to be pushed to be played before Oppenheimer. I don’t know if Universal is going to start showing it relentless, as they have on some of the August comedies. And aside from “I’ll bite his dick off” and dogs on mushrooms, the trailer is not super sharp on what the full length experience will be.

The Comedies

No Hard Feelings - The marketing pitch, like most of the movie, is all Jennifer Lawrence, 8 years from her last real hit movie. She is still magic. But the marketing and publicity - which is still happening - is Jen Jen Jen Jen Jen. How did Jen feel about the nude scene? How bad did Jen vomit after The Hot Ones? Do you still love Jen? Yes, we do. But that $15 million opening was about as far as that would take you. And Sony must be feeling good that they have 3 more weekends before Barbie to run on people loving Jen.

Thing is, having seen the film, we know that the story - for better or worse as a movie - ends up playing heavily on Our Miss Jen trying to get her act together. And the marketing has pretty much left that alone. Last I remember, Ms. Lawrence’s super power as a star was that people wanted to see her overcome bad situations. In this case, her Maddie is in one of her own creation… but she does dig out… at least enough for a trailer or ads. Did they test these variations and find they came up short? Probably. But the $15m open to $50m domestic total is what you get from what they sold. To have a shot at $25/$75, they needed a broader sell.

The Blackening - I like this campaign and I like this movie, flawed though both may be. Lionsgate got out of the “urban” business about 4 years ago with the last Madea movie. The did “the black Saw” with Spiral in 2021, but COVID didn’t allow them any room to breathe. This campaign got to me by trailer and I laughed and I thought, this is a film with legitimate crossover potential. But it didn’t crossover. It didn’t find the full force of the black audience either. The first Madea film opened to $30 million. Of course, Tyler Perry had primed the pump on a level that white audiences didn’t understand over years traveling the country in theaters. Here, it was a terrific cast, but no movie openers. A TV famous group… and almost exclusively for black audiences. Could they have done anything better? Probably not. I considered pushing this into the other group (like Joy Ride)… but if there was an answer, it was not found.

SAME OL’, SAME OL’

How do you sell, not just drop, super-well established IP films? It’s a huge challenge for any marketing team looking to do more than is expected. Some of the most successful campaigns have been virtual stencils of previous successful campaigns. There was a ton of work involved with opening The Dark Knight to record numbers… but a lot of that effort was to use Nolan’s amazing visuals (much more instant visual gratification than Batman Begins) and really, to regress back to the old Batman campaigns that had created record openings for 4 of the first 5 goes at it.

It may feel unfair, but…