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Loser
Location: who the fuck cares?
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Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Moviemercial
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Moviemercial
From The New York Times
Sunday, September 21, 2003
By Evelyn Nussenbaum
Quote:
People who complain about too much product placement in movies may want to brace themselves. Coming soon, advertisements won't only be in the movies. They will be the movies.
Instead of releasing toys and games tied to a movie, some studios are starting with the product and figuring out the film later.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Haunted Mansion," both based on Disney rides, were the first wave of merchandise-themed pictures. The next, based on toys, is on the way. Movie versions of Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, Bionicle toys, Super Soaker squirt guns and My Little Pony are all being developed.
The makers of movies and toys are betting that films built around well-known brands will win back customers who have defected to video games and the Internet. The toy industry has another goal: finding a new realm for advertising now that the strength of the Saturday-morning cartoons has been diluted by all-day cartoon channels.
"Kids have so many options in terms of what and when they watch,'' said Jim Wagner, senior vice president for entertainment marketing at Mattel.
Mattel, Hasbro and Lego Toys are responsible, to varying degrees, for these "moviemercials." Lego Toys has a production deal with Miramax to exploit its Bionicle toys (characters whose name springs from the combination of "biological" and "chronicle.") Their first joint venture, a direct-to-DVD film called "Bionicle: Mask of Light," was released last week. They are working on a Bionicles theatrical film for release in 2005 and two more DVD projects.
Hasbro hired the Creative Artists Agency in January to drum up Hasbro-branded movie and television projects. One of the agency's first moves was to negotiate a deal with the movie producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura for a live-action G.I. Joe film. Hasbro, a screenwriter and Mr. di Bonaventura agreed on a story line, and he is pitching the idea to several studios. Separately, Hasbro licensed Super Soakers, My Little Pony and several other brands to Fat Rock Entertainment, a company created last December by a group of former studio executives to produce films based on merchandise. The Super Soakers and My Little Pony movies are scheduled for release in late 2004.
Mattel is testing the waters of feature filmmaking after producing cheaper DVD and Web films based on its Barbie doll. The company, which also makes Hot Wheels, has licensed the brand to Columbia Pictures, which in turn signed up McG, the director of the "Charlie's Angels'' movies.
The deals are a relatively cheap, low-risk way for Mattel and Hasbro to see what the movie business can do for them. They invest little or nothing, sign off on the writers, have veto power over the script and share in any profits. That's quite a turnaround from the days when Coca-Cola had to pay filmmakers for a couple of cans of Coke in an office shot, or when toy makers waited for the go-ahead from studios to start rolling out a product tied to a movie.
"We don't like to make souvenirs of movies anymore," Mr. Wagner of Mattel said. "We need the entertainment to create a brand for us that's long term."
THE movie makers are uncharacteristically circumspect when they discuss their new relationship with the toy business. David Pritchard, chief executive of Fat Rock, talks of "respecting" Hasbro's brands and calls the Super Soaker movie "a kind of product placement.''
Michael D. Eisner, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, who has his own brands to leverage, does not have to cater to any toy makers. Although he says the sequel to "Pirates" is the last ride-based movie he plans to make, he has an endless supply if he ever changes his mind.
The filmmakers' urge to start with the goods and fill in the story later is an attempt to revitalize their business. Video games, e-mail and Internet surfing in general are consuming more of moviegoers' time. The average American spent 154 hours last year on the Internet, nearly triple the amount spent four years ago, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a business that offers financial services to media companies. People played video games for 67 hours last year, on average, up 49 percent from four years ago. The average time spent at the movies, meanwhile - 14 hours - is up less than 8 percent since 1998.
"You're looking at an industry that is shrinking,'' said Ken Markman of KMM Enterprises, a movie marketing business in Los Angeles that has worked with major studios.
Some other strategies have already failed. "Opening wide,'' the practice of scheduling movie debuts for as many theaters as possible to generate instant hits, has often backfired, causing attendance to plunge by the second weekend. Sequels, once thought to be safe, are now hit or miss. While "The Matrix Reloaded" was a hit this summer, "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," did not recover production costs, making only $64.6 million in the United States.
Brand names, the producers figure, will help put movies back on cultural radar screens. "Think of it as prefab housing,'' says Bill Mechanic, who oversaw "Titanic," "Braveheart" and "Boys Don't Cry" when he was chairman and chief executive of 20th Century Fox Films. "It's a way of getting through the marketing clutter."
THEY also risk a backlash. There is a delicate balance between reminding viewers of a beloved childhood experience and making them feel that they have been duped into watching a 90-minute commercial. "You don't want to see the cynical hand of the property owner," said Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal Pictures. Still, audiences have grudgingly accepted 30-second commercials before movies in theaters, giving many producers hope that it is safe to push further.
Merchandise-themed movies are not the only things on their minds. Some envision movies sponsored by advertisers, reminiscent of "Hallmark Hall of Fame" or the old Procter & Gamble soap operas.
Mr. Markman, the movie marketer, says the cross-promotion possibilities are endless: "I can see a movie sequel coming in the form of a video game. It may come in the form of consumer products or a DVD. All of which then feed the market over time for a second movie."
So does this trend have legs? Who knows? Hollywood loves to thoroughly exploit every fad before dumping it: witness the cycles over the years of Westerns, disaster movies and films based on comic-book characters. "In most industries, one is not a trend,'' Mr. Markman said. "In this one, it's a phenomenon." In other words, there may be many more merchandising movies before the concept has been beaten into the ground.
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I thought it was bad enough with continual product placement in all the movies (remember the scene from Wayne's World where they exaggerated the product placement). Now our children will be subjected to movies that are nothing but one huge commercial, and our wallets will suffer.
Your opinions?
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