X-Men: Dark Phoenix film

[Theleviathan]

This all sounds very bizzare. Dark Phoenix was heavily advertised in Ireland. Well in advance, it was hard not to see an advertisement for it. Was it the US marketing team that got fired then?

Dont be fooled by these threads, DP was marketed plenty starting with Captain Marvel. There wasnt saturation, but it was significant. Those looking to fault marketing are spinning things more or less.

[spirit2011]

Dont be fooled by these threads, DP was marketed plenty starting with Captain Marvel. There wasnt saturation, but it was significant. Those looking to fault marketing are spinning things more or less.

The date changed 2 or 3 times. That wasn't good for the movie

[Maestro 216]

https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/06/...ix-xmen-manga/

Dark Phoenix might not have been the blockbuster fans wanted, but it did bring the X-Men Movies Universe as we know it to an end. With the characters resting under Disney now, this X-Men movie marks the last time fans will see this roster on the big screen, and it seems one well-known artist is bowing out Jean Grey in style.

After all, the artist behind My Hero Academia: Vigilantes just drew up the heroine, and she looks as lively as ever in this post.

Over on Twitter, Betten Court shared his take on the X-Men heroine. As you can see below, the artist drew up Jean as she appears in the film, and Court said he was able to see the movie after he hit a big deadline with his My Hero Academia spin-off.

D91Ob31UcAARtgc.jpg

[Theleviathan]

The date changed 2 or 3 times. That wasn't good for the movie

That has nothing to do with marketing. Once the date was settled and from February on...the movie got plenty of push.

The thing to explain is why it didn't catch on. Perhaps the public nature of the production issues made people apprehensive to invest, perhaps it was the awfulness of Apocalypse, perhaps they just never invested in this cast, perhaps people already moved on to the MCU...maybe it was all of the above. But it wasn't marketing.

[Divine Spark]

Dont be fooled by these threads, DP was marketed plenty starting with Captain Marvel. There wasnt saturation, but it was significant. Those looking to fault marketing are spinning things more or less.

Not according to this Fox marketing executive on March 15th(right after Captain Marvel released).

The situation has had longtime employees on the Fox lot suffering a kind of prolonged trauma since the merger was announced, in December 2017. To hear them tell it, they are being issued mostly vague, Orwellian-lite guidance that outlines dress codes and explains key-card access, but they have been left wanting in terms of business directives. In the middle of February, Fox’s marketing and distribution departments gathered with the filmmakers of Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Men installment from producer-director Simon Kinberg, to lay out their plans for the film’s June release. It was a typical meeting. Ad buys were discussed, and the publicity tour for the film’s stars, including Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Chastain, was laid out. But it was still disconcerting, both because of all the new faces in the room—a handful of high-end consultants have been hired temporarily to fill the jobs recently vacated by long-term employees—and because of the ad hoc approach the Fox marketing team was taking toward the film’s release, four months away.

“We know when we are dropping a trailer, but we are nowhere near where we should be at this time,” said one marketing exec who was at the meeting. “It’s frightening. I would be mad if I were a filmmaker.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...y-fox-freakout

[Theleviathan]

Not according to this Fox marketing executive on March 15th(after Captain Marvel released).

And some guy from Ireland says he was inundated, so I disagree. I saw plenty of publicity for it. People I know were aware of it also, they just had a profound sense of indifference about it. In fact, what I heard most often was, "Ugh, but after Apocalypse I don't know if I care"

And even if some magical marketing team had been brought in.....it wouldn't have mattered. What more would they have done? They put the trailers in front of the biggest movies of the year. They were on all the talk shows. Sophie Turner was out right after GoT and promoting Phoenix. At the end of the day the movie didn't generate buzz because it didn't have anything to be buzzy about.

But tell you what....you tell me: what would the marketing have been that would have saved this film? If it wouldn't have saved the film, can we please stop talking about it?

[Divine Spark]

And some guy from Ireland says he was inundated, so I disagree. I saw plenty of publicity for it. People I know were aware of it also, they just had a profound sense of indifference about it. In fact, what I heard most often was, "Ugh, but after Apocalypse I don't know if I care"

And even if some magical marketing team had been brought in.....it wouldn't have mattered. What more would they have done? They put the trailers in front of the biggest movies of the year. They were on all the talk shows. Sophie Turner was out right after GoT and promoting Phoenix. At the end of the day the movie didn't generate buzz because it didn't have anything to be buzzy about.

But tell you what....you tell me: what would the marketing have been that would have saved this film? If it wouldn't have saved the film, can we please stop talking about it?

I found it very strange that you are claiming to know more about how this was marketed than Fox marketing executives.

Some of the publicity you listed was months after Captain Marvel’s release and after Disney had officially owned Fox. Like I said earlier if it wasn’t for Disney this would have opened lower than Rocketman.

Speaking of trailers, I found something very interesting and it shows that having a movie play in front of a film isn’t enough and that Studios don’t have took much control over previews.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comm...mined/ech9be1/

[Theleviathan]

I found it very strange that you are claiming to know more about how this was marketed than Fox marketing executives.

Some of the publicity you listed was months after Captain Marvel’s release and after Disney had officially owned Fox. Like I said earlier if it wasn’t for Disney this would have opened lower than Rocketman.

Speaking of trailers, I found something very interesting and it shows that having a movie play in front of a film isn’t enough and that Studios don’t have took much control over previews.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comm...mined/ech9be1/

What more should they have done?

[MarvelMaster616]

https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/06/...ix-xmen-manga/



D91Ob31UcAARtgc.jpg

That's a stunning image. Love the style.

[Askani's Flame]

Are people using marketing as an excuse as to why this film was poorly received, vs.... I don't know... The calibur of the writing, acting, and directing of the film....

[Frobisher]

Are people using marketing as an excuse as to why this film was poorly received, vs.... I don't know... The calibur of the writing, acting, and directing of the film....

The soul still burns!

[Divine Spark]

Are people using marketing as an excuse as to why this film was poorly received, vs.... I don't know... The calibur of the writing, acting, and directing of the film....

No. We were talking about Box Office.

But speaking of the acting that doesn’t seem to be too common of a criticism from professional critics.

[Theleviathan]

Are people using marketing as an excuse as to why this film was poorly received, vs.... I don't know... The calibur of the writing, acting, and directing of the film....

Yes, among other excuses.

[Divine Spark]

That person is talking about critical reception.

[ClanAskani]

And some guy from Ireland says he was inundated, so I disagree. I saw plenty of publicity for it. People I know were aware of it also, they just had a profound sense of indifference about it. In fact, what I heard most often was, "Ugh, but after Apocalypse I don't know if I care"

And even if some magical marketing team had been brought in.....it wouldn't have mattered. What more would they have done? They put the trailers in front of the biggest movies of the year. They were on all the talk shows. Sophie Turner was out right after GoT and promoting Phoenix. At the end of the day the movie didn't generate buzz because it didn't have anything to be buzzy about.

But tell you what....you tell me: what would the marketing have been that would have saved this film? If it wouldn't have saved the film, can we please stop talking about it?

This article from Hollywood Reporter has a lot of about the post-mortem on what went wrong with the Dark Phoenix marketing debacle:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...-plans-1216859

Lack of awareness from the general public was an issue, so not everyone was seeing advertising:

An NRG tracking poll taken in May showed that Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios' rival superhero franchise, was rated higher than Dark Phoenix as a choice for moviegoers — and that's after Endgame had been playing in theaters for five weeks already. "Definite awareness never got a score over 75 on tracking," says one insider. "An X-Men movie had never been below 90."

"When definite awareness of Rocketman is higher than an X-Men movie, you know you're in strange territory," says another insider.

Why there was a lack of awareness is another question all together since there was marketing. It's becoming more and more difficult to reach people as they watch less network tv and tune out advertising online and also many people go to fewer movies in theaters to see posters and trailers.

But I don't agree with many of these conclusions and some of the opinions about what went wrong - especially the marketing exec who said to Deadline that the marketing materials didn't make Sophie look pretty enough. This is the type of garbage that you frequently hear execs obsessing over - the belief that how Sophie Turner looks on the poster has more to do with people buying tickets than the actual content of the movie.

The overall campaign was doomed six months ago, so really there wasn't much. But marketing for movies is different than any other marketing because the goal can be to essentially trick someone into seeing movie they have no intention of seeing that isn't any good. If you're marketing any other product, that doesn't work. But you get enough people to buy tickets opening weekend, the publicity can carry over. It's now the #1 movie in the US, or #1 movie in the world and news coverage for the opening weekend, and so on.

There's one fundamental difference at the core of how Marvel markets their movies which is absent from Fox. Everyone at Marvel are so enthusiastic about every movie they have in production. Their marketing team doesn't take the approach that they have to somehow convince the audience to see a lame comic book movie, they genuinely love the movie. Their enthusiasm is contagious and spreads to trailer vendors who rave about how awesome upcoming releases are and that extends to exhibitors and theater chains.

So if there's reshoots for an MCU movie, there isn't the negatively. It gets shut down very quickly.

At Fox, there's no one really at the helm making sure there isn't bad buzz or to spin negativity. The situation with New Mutants is absolutely ridiculous that when the cast is doing press for other projects, they aren't briefed on what to say. The fact that Maisie Williams went on an obscenity-laced tirade about having no idea what was going on with it or when the reshoots were going to happen in a Rolling Stones cover interview isn't something that should happen. That THR article linked to above has multiple paragraphs about the New Mutants reshoots and questions if it will be release - that also shouldn't happen. Fox needs to make sure all reporters believe the reshoots will be happening to make the movie better and there will be a theatrical release (even if there may not be).

The point to have fixed the negative trajectory the Dark Phoenix campaign was on was months and months ago. Even if New Mutants is a fantastic movie, the negativity is already so ingrained in every movie news site, it's creeping into the audience. Aladdin did open better than expected after a lot of people hated the first trailer and were heavily negative towards the movie, so it is possible to shift the opinions of future releases. But it takes an actual vision and that's not happening at Fox without a lot of leadership.