Fri Jan 25, 2008 11:28AM3 comments ›
Fri Jan 25, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Marketing The Dark Knight After Heath Ledger's Death
How will the promotional plan change?
There's been a lot of talk about how the death of Heath Ledger will affect The Dark Knight, but there hasn't been much response from the studios or producers thus far. Will million-dollar plans get scrapped? Will posters featuring The Joker be removed and/or discontinued? Will they scrap the entire film and just start all over again from scratch??
Okay, so the last question was never really an issue, but you get the idea.
Well, we wish we had all of the answers for you, but we don't. Instead, we have this article from The Wall Street Journal that manages to get a few quotes from powerful people about the marketing plans for The Dark Knight. However, what really caught our eye about this article was the comprehensive look it provides at the marketing timeline for the film and how all of the bits and pieces fit into a much grander puzzle.
At the defaced Harvey Dent Web page, fans could get a code that allowed them to remove a piece of the overlying image. As more fans participated, Mr. Dent disappeared pixel by pixel, displaying the first official photo of Mr. Ledger's Joker: a grim white face appearing out of the darkness with dead eyes and an erratic, ruby smile carved into his cheeks.
Not only does it have a long list of sites you can visit for all of the film's viral-marketed fun, but it also places the information in semi-chronological order - so you can trace the course of the viral campaign at your own pace.
Jump to comments (3)
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Comments (3)
Shawn Levasseur (1:10 PM on Fri Jan 25, 2008)
I doubt much will change for the film's marketing, other than Mr. Ledger's abscense from the promotional media tours, and the remaining cast having to answer questions about him.
Brendan Lee's death on the set of "The Crow" was a much greater hurdle, since the man died in the process of making the film. The movie's theme of death and loss, with Brendan's character being one of the deaths in the film didn't make matters much easier.
Vinnie Bartilucci (3:53 PM on Fri Jan 25, 2008)
They also did a massive scavenger-hunt like game at San Diego last year which required people on the ground there to cooperate with people at home on their computers, trading clues with each other. They had a sky-typer drawing phone numbers in the sky, the phone number gave you a web site, and so on. Eventually you'd find a person who made your face up like Joker's for free.
As fun as these things are, the point the article makes is a good one - they really don't reach anyone other than the hardcore internet viewers. Of course, that market are often the "first adopters" that movies need to make that first weekend a real smash.
They've been very careful with all the bat-sites to tell people to maintain caution when doing the stunts, to avoid another ATHF/Boston scenario.
I remember the stuff they did for AI, with a whole second storyline about a pleasure robot killing a college student (IIRC). They had interactive stuff like certain letters flashed in the credits of the trailer - you froze the clip, wrote the letters down and they spelled a web address, and down the rabbit hole you went.
When the Cloverfield website hysteria started, a site for an RPG called AlphaOmega was incorrectly tagged as being cloverfield-related, and the hitrate SKYROCKETED. As soon as it was shown not to be related, it was dropped like an ugly date the morning after the prom.
Heroes is still doing it, with websites and emails coming from "dead" character Hanna Gittleman, who, while only making one or two appearances on the show proper, is a major character in the comics and online experience.
Sal Loria (9:10 AM on Sat Jan 26, 2008)
http://www.thedarkknight.com has a tribute page up for Heath Ledger. On http://www.whysoserious.com, the other "official" website, they've added a black ribbon. Aside from that, still no word.