Earlier today the first teaser(?) for the new Dark Tower film was mercilessly dropped on us. I was expecting a short teaser trailer, as is the norm nowadays, but was blindsided when it turned out to be a twitter thread in which Matthew Mcconaughey and Idris Elba roleplayed as their characters? Ending with two short teasers?
Is there a precedent for this? Is this where we are now? Can any other marketing technique or ad campaign be weirder?
For some reason, that feels really appropriate (in spirit, at least) for The Dark Tower’s across-worlds, reality-bending style. Authors/actors right there with the characters, you know?
I believe they were teasing the actual trailer which is supposed to debut tomorrow (or today I guess 5/3). I often see actors teasing stuff like this from their Twitters but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone just kinda switch into character like that.
If you’re looking for weird marketing stuff…I mean…make yourself some tea or whatever you like and start Googling. From Bulletstorm’s raw meat and bullets in a box to Mighty Number 9’s tone deaf trailer there is a lot of weird/bad stuff out there.
I suppose. It was just really jarring for me to see because i’ve never seen anything like it, and two of this generations most renowned actors briefly took a dive into role-play twitter? (Nothing against role-play twitter, do whatever you love!)
lol to be fair, most corporate promotional stuff on twitter has this distinctly billboard feel, this in particular strays a little more toward conversational/organic but is definitely still weird. just marketing teams trying to test the waters a bit, i think
Oh I am well aware of gamings storied past pertaining to marketing gimmicks (Bloodvertising is a favorite) Im just not used to movie studios doing this stuff outside of like, Comic-Con. And even then its not that odd.
Ah, gotcha. I think also the fact that this movie comes out in the first week of August and they are just now starting their marketing campaign is probably what spurred this little exchange.
Acclaim’s marketing in late 90s/early 2000s was ridiculous. Just listened to the Super Best Friend Cast where they talked about how they offered a $10,000 bond to parents who named their baby “Turok” and offered to pay for speeding tickets if you proved you were on your way to buy Burnout 2.
I’m not sure that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s the first thing to pop into my head when I think of bonkers marketing.
EDIT: Oops, I see you mentioned that a bit. The “fake feud” on Twitter is super interesting. Remember Cloverfield? The marketing for that was insane with how it did its scavenger hunt and kept people on message boards searching. I had a few friends who were very into that stuff.
Oh god yeah all of the arg’s for Cloverfield were crazy. 10 Cloverfield Lane also had some weird arg stuff going on, but to a lesser extent.