X-Men: Dark Phoenix film

[Theleviathan]

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:.

Was it that or did people just so thoroughly not care that they tuned it out? As you say, it seems like some flimsy justifications when you cite how attractive Sophie looked. I keep asking anyone to tell me what should have been done differently? The X-men movies were all over the Fox channels and the preview as well. It was a trailer in front of both of the year's biggest movies.

I submit the lack of awareness was willful, not because of an absence or incompetence of marketing. People have heard negative for a year prior to the movie's release and they were never invested in this group of X-movies. They simply didn't care and no amount of exposure is going to change that.

[Divine Spark]

The X-men movies were all over the Fox channels and the preview as well. It was a trailer in front of both of the year's biggest movies.

We already addressed these points.

People have heard negative for a year prior to the movie's release

The Deadline article actually brought that up.

Dark Phoenix‘s calamity should be compared to the great success of Sony’s Venom. Here’s a movie that had bad reviews (29%) and constant buzz about fights between the pic’s director Ruben Fleischer and star Tom Hardy. Sony made Venom work with a great release date (Oct 5, with the pic posting the month’s best opening of $80.2M), sold the fun and gave audiences a great ride — all the way to $855M worldwide. Sony, led by studio boss Tom Rothman’s eye, willed Venom to its accomplishments. That didn’t happen here with Fox and Dark Phoenix.

https://deadline.com/2019/06/dark-ph..._LGuMbgDbFVK3w

Interestingly, Tom Rothman use to work at Fox and was the guy that made Phoenix a subplot in X3.

[Divine Spark]

Double post.

[Theleviathan]

We already addressed this point.

Did you answer my question yet? No? Then, politely again, please stop banging this excuse drum. Please.

I'm well aware that Venom faced the same problems. You know what separated Venom? People weren't bored with it and the movie was entertaining, if flawed.

People were willing to give it a shot. The audience for X-men fizzled prior to this movie and all the negativity only cemented the fate of being one of the biggest busts of the year.

[Divine Spark]

Did you answer my question yet?

You mean what they could have done? I could have done what Deadline suggested: not delay the movie after a trailer dropped and/or put the movie on an off-season that isn’t crowded. This would have at least helped the movie to not bomb as hard as it did.

The audience for X-men fizzled prior to this movie and all the negativity only cemented it's fate.

The last X-film before this was Logan which was nominated for a screenplay Oscar, though.

[Theleviathan]

You mean what they could have done? I could have done what Deadline suggested: not delay the movie after a trailer dropped and/or put the movie on an off-season that isn’t crowded. This would have at least helped the movie to not bomb as hard as it did.

The last X-film before this was Logan which was nominated for a screenplay Oscar, though.

Logan was completely divorced from this line of movies. C'mon.

Marketing has nothing to do with setting the release date of the movie. None. So, again, either stop about the marketing or tell me what could have been done differently.

[Divine Spark]

Logan was completely divorced from this line of movies. C'mon.

Marketing has nothing to do with setting the release date of the movie. None. So, again, either stop about the marketing or tell me what could have been done differently.

That is not the reason why it was nominated for a screenplay Oscar.

The release date actually would have influenced the marketing. According to Deadline they had been hearing the marketing chaotic since come Alita out in February(which gives validation to what that marketing executive said in said to Vanity Fair in March) and that seems to be the time when it started happening.

This leads us to the mishap of Fox marketing. With the Disney-Fox merger looming, we understand they’ve been a mess, distracted, with a revolving door of execs. We heard this around the time that Alita came out, that the filmmakers were dealing with different people in different marketing meetings. Some folks inform us that ever since Marc Weinstock left Fox as the head of domestic marketing in November 2016 (he’s now over at Paramount), the studio has been challenged to event-ize their slate (i.e. War of the Planet of the Apes, Alita, Dark Phoenix, and even Widows, which played well with audiences. However, give credit where credit is due — Bohemian Rhapsody was a magnificent swan song for the studio).

Had it kept the February date the movie would have gotten a Super Bowl spot instead of Alita and had they moved beyond date to beyond June it would have bought the Disney marketing team some time based on what Deadline said.

Once the merger happened, there was little for Disney to do. Materials were already up at CinemaCon at the beginning of April days after the merger. We hear Disney tried to push Dark Phoenix through its vertical integration, i.e. Disney Channel, but they didn’t have enough time and were inheriting a film that already had bad buzz with its reshoots and release date changes.

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.

I’ll cite some sources. Nearly half of millennials don’t watch tv.

https://adage.com/article/media/half...v-study/310564

https://www.businessinsider.com/youn...-charts-2018-8

https://qz.com/1563911/who-watches-the-most-tv/

[Theleviathan]

That is not the reason why it was nominated for a screenplay Oscar.

The release date actually would have influenced the marketing. According to Deadline they had been hearing the marketing chaotic since come Alita out in February(which gives validation to what that marketing executive said in said to Vanity Fair in March) and that seems to be the time when it started happening.



Had it kept the February date the movie would have gotten a Super Bowl spot instead of Alita and had they moved beyond date to beyond June it would have bought the Disney marketing team some time based on what Deadline said.





I’ll cite some sources. Nearly half of millennials don’t watch tv.

https://adage.com/article/media/half...v-study/310564

https://www.businessinsider.com/youn...-charts-2018-8

https://qz.com/1563911/who-watches-the-most-tv/

What should they have done?

Millions of people saw the trailer. Most of those millions didn't pay for a ticket.

[Jokerz79]

Fox saw the film was a mess and choose not to invest in a good marketing campaign I mean most films with the budget of Dark Phoenix spend close to a 100 million on marketing. Why would Fox do that if they figured out they had a turkey that while Marketing could help but not save and would probably end up costing more in Marketing than made by the marketing boost?

This happens all the time a studios figures out they have a bad film and do little marketing and bury it look at Holmes and Watson recently for an example.

[Divine Spark]

What should they have done?

Millions of people saw the trailer. Most of those millions didn't pay for a ticket.

Already addressed this.

Psychological research shows that when the human mind is exposed to a series of anything the minds tenancy is to remember the first thing, the last thing, and anything in the middle that resonated with them. In my presentation I usually build up a 20–30 minute preview pack with 12–16 previews in it. I then talk about these psychological limitations, and ask the people in the meeting to write down that names of all the previews they remembered. Generally everyone remembers the first 2, and the last 2, and then if there was a preview for something they specifically want to see. On average most people remember 5 out of 16 previews and most trailers in the middle are lost. So running more than 5 previews is generally not a good idea. With that in mind here are the placement guidelines.

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

This is why marketing executives in March were panicking despite there already being a trailer out. I’ll try to found the actual studies.

Fox saw the film was a mess and choose not to invest in a good marketing campaign I mean most films with the budget of Dark Phoenix spend close to a 100 million on marketing. Why would Fox do that if they figured out they had a turkey that while Marketing could help but not save and would probably end up costing more in Marketing than made by the marketing boost?

This happens all the time a studios figures out they have a bad film and do little marketing and bury it look at Holmes and Watson recently for an example.

Studios with this mindset put such movies in months when there is not such competition(Venom). August/September and January are dumping grounds. But they chose this June of all places.

Its very weird. But based on reports that doesn’t seem to be much of the case. People were simply getting laid off because of the merger.

[sage]

Maybe people would have been more aware of it if "X-Men" was in the title.

Exactly. When a family shows up to a theater not knowing exactly what to see, they would be much more inclined to see the latest "X-Men" movie if it said "X-Men" on the marquee as opposed to "Dark Phoenix" which the average moviegoer may not know is the latest X-Men. Just one of many ways that the film could have improved its box office performance.

[Divine Spark]

tune out advertising online

I searched this and it checks out.

By the year 2016 almost 70% of US millennials owned an ad blocker at least on one device, eMarket reports. This is not surprising, the Gen Y grew up on the internet and got used to searching all the answers on the web. And they are not willing to compromise on the content quality.

https://adlock.com/blog/why-millenials-block-ads/

Plenty of other articles mention this.

[Colossus1980]

I'm well aware that Venom faced the same problems. You know what separated Venom? People weren't bored with it and the movie was entertaining, if flawed.

Biggest difference is it was Venom's first solo outing and second appearance onscreen. It was fresh and new. That deadline was a pretty bad comparison. X-Men has been around 19 years onscreen and it was the 7th direct X-Men team movie. Stale.

[Colossus1980]

I’ll cite some sources. Nearly half of millennials don’t watch tv.

https://adage.com/article/media/half...v-study/310564

https://www.businessinsider.com/youn...-charts-2018-8

https://qz.com/1563911/who-watches-the-most-tv/

You don't need TV. Social media is enough. YouTube is king. But no one cared enough as evidenced by the small amount of views for the trailers compared to other similar movies.

[Divine Spark]

You don't need TV. Social media is enough. YouTube is king. But no one cared enough as evidenced by the small amount of views for the trailers compared to other similar movies.

I think Sage’s post answered why that was the case.

I remember when the second trailer dropped the FilmSelect version was titled “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” and it ended up having more views than the Fox trailer...