Six Films Advertised Virally

By Matt Prigge 
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Aug. 11, 2009

The Blair Witch Project (1999): Whether it’s billboards reading
“Who is Darkman?”
or William Castle hyperbole, advertising has always thrived on creativity and thriftiness. After this lo-fi horror flick scared the bejesus out of Sundancers, its studio developed a crafty campaign, including a site purporting the film’s verisimilitude. The result: a gargantuan profit and a new, never quite repeated business model.


A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001): The latest Spielberg shouldn’t need to create a dense proto-alternate reality game to get attention, but his revamped Kubrick project did just that. Designed by Microsoft, “The Beast” was unveiled via cryptic clues on Ain’t It Cool News. The few brainy enough to keep up were greeted with a simulacrum involving dozens of websites, emails and calls from “characters” as well as invites to fake rallies. The film itself was almost an after-thought.


The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004): Poor Peter Greenaway. Once the closest the avant-garde had to the mainstream, the British filmmaker descended into indifference after his ’80s-’90s prime. So he started on his magnum opus: a multimedia spectacular including three feature films, 92 DVDs, a TV series, various websites, books and CD-ROMS. Alas, the films barely rode the festival circuit, and the bug was only caught by hardcore Greenaway-heads. 


Snakes on a Plane (2006): Future viral marketers: don’t leak your trailer and create a stir eight months before your film’s release date. Poor thing couldn’t even nab a killer opening weekend.


The Signal (2007): Itching to be Blair Witch ’s successor, this Sundance fave released not only cryptic trailers, but also a bi-weekly podcast. But Blair Witch it wasn’t.


District 9 (2009): Another year, another Cloverfield : a modestly budgeted genre film toting big names (here, Peter Jackson) and advertised mysteriously. Though at least this one doesn’t star Abercrombie idiots without any survival instincts.

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