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June 2016 Marketing of Legend of Tarzan

I wanted to report my latest trip to my local Regal 22 theater in Foothill Ranch, Orange County Ca.  Still no coming soon Tarzan poster on the outside facade.  Nothing in the interior open concession area.  No cardboard displays in any hallway.  Saw a young manager and asked what's up with the Tarzan movie.  The first thing out of his mouth was "isn't this going bomb?  I read in Variety that is was only going to do 33 million".  He then mentioned the one lone little Tarzan poster in the farthest bowels of the facility.  I had a nice long conversation with the young man and he's personally rooting for Tarzan.  He thought they might have just received a large Tarzan display but no one has shown up to put it together.  I really don't know what to make of this.  Did WB drop the ball when marketing to their actual distributors (theatres).  There's zero buzz at this theater.

Quote from Will Streckfus on June 19, 2016, 10:21 am

I wanted to report my latest trip to my local Regal 22 theater in Foothill Ranch, Orange County Ca.  Still no coming soon Tarzan poster on the outside facade.  Nothing in the interior open concession area.  No cardboard displays in any hallway.  Saw a young manager and asked what's up with the Tarzan movie.  The first thing out of his mouth was "isn't this going bomb?  I read in Variety that is was only going to do 33 million".  He then mentioned the one lone little Tarzan poster in the farthest bowels of the facility.  I had a nice long conversation with the young man and he's personally rooting for Tarzan.  He thought they might have just received a large Tarzan display but no one has shown up to put it together.  I really don't know what to make of this.  Did WB drop the ball when marketing to their actual distributors (theatres).  There's zero buzz at this theater.

It goes back to the consistency of marketing, because I'm reading on other forums that people are seeing in their theaters the bigger posters and promo materials, and yet you're in the greater LA area and aren't seeing anything. It makes no sense.

It's been presumed that LOT biggest competitors will be IDR and BFG. And yet neither of them seem to be tracking well either.

IDR's marketing improved since its first trailer but this info about the screenings is interesting:

However, we won’t really know much more about the sequel until the day it starts hitting theaters. There won’t even be any early buzz because press screenings aren’t happening until the day of the wide release. In fact, the first screenings of the movie will happen the morning after the film has already played the previous evening for the traditional Thursday night preview screenings.

This doesn’t bode well for the quality of the movie, because if 20th Century Fox was confident in what they had, they’d want critics saying all those nice things before the movie came out. We’ll all just have to find out if the sequel is good at the same time.

http://www.slashfilm.com/independence-day-resurgence-las-vegas-tourism/#more-359443

“In the social media tracking we’re doing, we’re really not seeing the sort of activity we were seeing for example with Jurassic World,” Loria noted. “It would be unfair to compare it with Star Wars, of course, but Jurassic World is I think a [fair] comparison, but we just simply haven’t seen a performance there to indicate strong numbers the way Jurassic World had.”

Those observations notwithstanding, if one thing became clear during my survey it’s that the performance of a film like Independence Day: Resurgence is simply difficult to predict. The opening weekend predictions among the trio of experts I spoke with were wildly divergent, with Nash estimating an opening gross somewhere between $75 and $95 million, Mumpower forecasting a “mid $60s” debut and Loria pegging it at a very specific $47 million. Estimates of its total domestic gross, meanwhile, ranged anywhere from $125 million to $300 million -- a gap as wide as the monument-sized holes left by ID4's invading aliens.

http://www.hitfix.com/news/box-office-experts-on-independence-day-resurgence-its-no-jurassic-world

Here are the advance screenings for LOT:

 

Reading this definitely makes me feel better.   I'm starting to understand that each theater is run completely independent of each other, even if they're Regal's.  The ID4 article confirms what I thought when I first saw the trailer.  Money grab.  Let's take a classic sci-fi event film and let's do it again on steroids.  Easy $.  You don't even have to worry about a good story.  The masses will show up for old times sake.  No need to show advanced screenings.  I'm very happy WB has all these advance screenings.  This shows they're confident they have a good product.  The rave reviews that erupt at the start of the week will catapult LOT into the mainstream conscience.  I believe we are about to watch the perfect convergence of how a sleeper hit happens.  Start with a long drought of really good event movies.  I believe Captain America was the last event movie that scored in the 90's on the Rotten Tomatoes meter.  How long ago was that?  Next, have the competition be weak like ID4 or not really competition for our demographic like BFG which will appeal to families with young kids.  I'd say the Purge is a film that appeals to a specific demographic of young horror splatter films, so put all that together and I believe we are about to witness the world becoming aware of the real Tarzan.

Quote from Will Streckfus on June 19, 2016, 2:13 pm

Reading this definitely makes me feel better.   I'm starting to understand that each theater is run completely independent of each other, even if they're Regal's.  The ID4 article confirms what I thought when I first saw the trailer.  Money grab.  Let's take a classic sci-fi event film and let's do it again on steroids.  Easy $.  You don't even have to worry about a good story.  The masses will show up for old times sake.  No need to show advanced screenings.  I'm very happy WB has all these advance screenings.  This shows they're confident they have a good product.  The rave reviews that erupt at the start of the week will catapult LOT into the mainstream conscience.  I believe we are about to watch the perfect convergence of how a sleeper hit happens.  Start with a long drought of really good event movies.  I believe Captain America was the last event movie that scored in the 90's on the Rotten Tomatoes meter.  How long ago was that?  Next, have the competition be weak like ID4 or not really competition for our demographic like BFG which will appeal to families with young kids.  I'd say the Purge is a film that appeals to a specific demographic of young horror splatter films, so put all that together and I believe we are about to witness the world becoming aware of the real Tarzan.

Not knowing anything about the theater industry, but I'm still going to presume that they are managed independently and perhaps yours has a manager who either doesn't think that LOT's going to do well and isn't bothering with even internal promotion and either/or isn't really a good manager.

As for IDR, I'd not really paid that mention to the details of their marketing/tracking: I knew that way they were marketing, with the viral videos, etc., was getting positive results, but didn't know anything about the other marketing, ad buys, tv appearances, etc. So to find out today that they're not screening did come as a bit of a shock. And apparently they're not doing much of anything the final week, if this article is true:

“Independence Day: Resurgence” is not on the cover this week’s Entertainment Weekly, which just landed.

The stars of “Resurgence” are not all over the TV, appearing on “Ellen” or the “Tonight Show” or “Jimmy Kimmel,” showing clips.

In fact, there is dead silence surrounding the hugely expensive, highly anticipated sequel to the massive 1996 Roland Emmerich hit “Independence Day.”

That movie was released on July 3, 1996 to tie in with the actual Independence Day– July 4th weekend. This one is set for June 24th, very specifically NOT that tie in.

There have been no advance screenings, no press. There’s no press junket this weekend. My junketeer friends have received no information. There’s some kind of premiere on Monday in Los Angeles next week, a couple of days before the opening night in theaters. But nothing else is set for New York at all, and that is a bad bad sign.

But the cast did sneak into New York last week for stealth publicity: they rang the opening bell at the New York stock Exchange. They appeared in an AOL Build Speaker series, whatever that is. They were on Sirius XM Radio. On Friday, there was a premiere in Mexico City.

 

Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but “IDR” is coming. The cast must be wondering what’s going on. Or they know.

http://www.showbiz411.com/2016/06/18/independence-day-sequel-fox-bracing-for-200-mil-of-possible-bad-news-with-no-advance-screenings-and-stealth-press

So this is an opportunity for LOT, should the reviews be good, because other than Dory, there's not much out there right now. IDR will have a fan base that'll come out regardless of reviews, but that might be it here in the US. BFG, even it does better than tracking indicates, doesn't seem the type of movie to bring in adults w/o kids the way Pixar movies do. So if you're an adult looking for a non-horror film you might just decide to give LOT a chance, even if you hadn't been paying attention to it before.

Final LOT  video ," Conquer," just dropped on You Tube by WB. We get a real scene of Tarzan talking to Williams and he actually  utters a whole sentence. Skarsgard is using his deep husky voice. AnEnglish accent for sure. Most of the focus is on the animals,particularly the apes and Tarzan. The soundtrack is all drums. The theme is that Tarzan has an animal spirit and that's why he conquered them. It mixes shots we have seen before with ones we haven't.

Once .i started following LO's marketing so closely ,I too ,realized how individually theaters were run. From the trailers and where and when to place them to the posters. My guess is that the studios know this and don't count on poster placement or trailer placement to get the word out.

 

I read that article about Independence Day Resurgence and it's lack of a screening or,it seems, a big red carpet event with full press coverage and thought immediately,hat this could be a good thing for LOT. The new video for Hozier's song Better Love, is getting a lot of views on You Tube ( over 350,000 and climbing) which is good PR and now this new video will give it more attention. Skarsgard is making several TV show appearances this week and most likely more next week. I wonder if any other cast members will be joining him next week?

 

 

 

 

A few quotes from David Yates.

http://thefilmgeekguy.blogspot.com/2016/06/david-yates-talks-tarzan-remake-2016.html

A brief clip debuted on GMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTAmxpSQ6Yw

I was watching the premier of Season 3 of The Last  Ship On demand ( it aired last night) and I saw an LOT commercial I hadn't seen before,it was longer and had some never before seen shots. It started with the usual Tarzan fast paced scenes like Tarzan leaping off of the cliff and Rom saying to Jane" He's Tarzan. You're Jane. He'll come for you."  Then  a big banner appears at the bottom of the screen announcing " And now a special look at" then comes the Legend of Tarzan movie logo followed by  a conglomeration of the highlights from past trailers and visions using very one of the catch phrases from " He was thought to be an evil spirit, a ghost in the treesas " to " his spirit came from them,he understood them and learned to conquer them" including Jane's threat " get ready because that is nothing compared to what he will do to you. "  The newshots , I spotted are of Tarzan still outfitted as John Clayton seated in the long grass of the savanah facing some lions. Then he leans forward and starts the head nudging with the lioness. Another one shows him dressed as Tarzan walking  away from Williams ,who asks " where are you going?" and Tarzan replies" to get some friends". It was really good and acted as a great summary of what we've seen so far with a little extra,

Watched it again and noticed that they also had of Tarzan moving through the train manhandling and punching  soldiers out of his way as he went.

Watched it again and noticed that they also had of Tarzan moving through the train manhandling and punching  soldiers out of his way as he went.

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