How do you market a film?

I'm sure everyone reading this has heard of the 2019 mega-hit called Avengers: Endgame. You might even know that it is the second highest grossing film of all time, behind James Cameron's Avatar (2012), reeling in $2.708 Billion (CNBC). That's more money than some entire countries have at their disposal. Now, I have to ask, have you ever heard of the 1960 film The Flower Thief? No? Yeah, me neither. I'll tell you why: The film was made for less than $1000. Compare this to Avengers: Endgame, which cost about $500 Million. When you see these comparisons, it begins to make sense why everyone knows about one film but not the other and I can imagine that you are beginning to correlate the expenses of a film with the consumer awareness directed towards it. While it is true that nearly $150 Million of Avengers: Endgame's budget was strictly reserved for marketing and promotion, and therefore it was able to achieve incredible awareness, it may be more complicated than that. Like all products and services, there are many different ways to market a film to varying levels of success.

The most obvious way to market a movie is to take after Marvel Studios and spend a ludicrous amount of cash on a marketing budget. Trailers, posters, interviews, press tours, ad-reads, etc. are all ways to market a movie and depending on how much the studio is willing to spend on these advertisements, the more of them will be shown to viewers like you and me. Afterall, movies are a shopping product and therefore dozens of other products are available for a consumer to choose from and still achieve a similar experience. Getting as many eyes on your movie as possible is crucial to achieving success and spending the most money to get those eyes on your film will ensure success. Or will it? What if the trailer you spent so much money on gets negative attention? While one could argue that all publicity is good publicity, remember, movies need to differentiate themselves to stand out as a shopping product in the mind of a consumer. Why watch a movie that looks so bad when I could go watch Avengers, regardless of how many times I see the trailer? This is where some studios will spend even more money on reshoots, literally filming new scenes of the movie, to better appeal to consumers. This is what I would call the film version of product modification. Take Sonic The Hedgehog (2020), for example. With a $85 million estimated budget (less than the $100 million average, but still nothing to scoff at), Paramount had plenty of money to spend on advertisements. However, when consumers saw the trailer, they couldn't get over how ugly, fake-looking, and arguably frightening the titular character, Sonic, looked. In the videogame he is based on, he's a cute cartoon hedgehog, but since the trailer showed him off as some bizarre "realistic" humanoid-hedgehog monster, consumers were not feeling it. Paramount felt the need to re-animate the entire character and delay the movie, spending millions more on production to alleviate the backlash. It certainly paid off, with the film grossing over $300 million. So, not only do large film companies need a large budget to reach the largest target market possible, they also need to show something good to the consumer to get their money's worth.

(above) Sonic's original design vs his redesgin

Now, not every movie has such insane budgets, but we have to think about films as an industry. If the majority of studios are pouring millions into differentiated films with enormous marketing reach, it's only natural that other studios would go for a low-cost method. Have you ever heard of the film Paranormal Activity? I'm sure that more of you have at least heard of this over The Flower Theif, but surprisingly, both have pretty similar budgets. Paranormal Activity cost just about $15,000 to make...and grossed just under $200 million. How on earth did they manage to get so many seats in the theater? Think of Tesla's $0 marketing strategy. Horror movies such as Paranormal Activity have the unique ability to draw in crowds through word of mouth. If enough people talk about how "scary the movie is" online, consumers will naturally get interested. "It was the scariest movie I've ever seen, you NEED to see it" can draw in almost as many customers as dozens of ads plastered everywhere you look.

(above) Paranormal Activity famous still

So, which way should you market a movie if you decide to make one, or you are the product manager for a studio? Like everything in life, it depends. Generally, films with lower production costs can make massive returns with minimal marketing budgets based off word of mouth, while movies that cost upward of $200 million just to make (a single page of a 90-page screenplay can cost 10's of thousands of dollars to shoot) better have a decent marketing budget to play it safe and guarantee attention.

Dixon, Wheeler Winston, "Performativity in 1960s Experimental Film", Film Criticism Vol 23, 1998

"Sonic the Hedgehog". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Archived from the original on January 24, 2021. Retrieved January 24, 2021

Whitten, Sarah. “'Avatar' Retakes Box Office Crown from 'Avengers: Endgame' after China Rerelease.” CNBC, CNBC, 13 Mar. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/13/avatar-once-again-highest-grossing-film-of-all-time-at-the-box-office.html.