Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Movie Marketing is Hard! Nicolas Cage Movies

Another in our Movie Marketing Is Hard! series.Now that we know that The New York Times is keeping an eye on this blog, let's give them more of what they love: pointing out the obvious lack of creativity amongst studio ad campaigns.

Notice any, ahem, similarities between the one-sheets from these two Nicolas Cage movies? Gore Verbinski's "The Weather Man" (from 2005) and Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" (also from 2005) have a few eerie likenesses.

  • Nicolas Cage, squarely facing the camera, looking straight forward
  • Cage wearing a coat and tie
  • against a white background, with a simple title graphic against white as well
  • most significantly, the exactly-the-same creepy, sad expression on Cage's face
Of course, the "Lord Of War" poster gets serious bonus creative points for the illustration of Cage's likeness using ammunition, while "The Weather Man" poster gets several points deducted for creating an image whose defining theme is that a big Hollywood star is in the film. And at one point, he gets nailed with a strawberry shake.

2 comments:

Peter said...

The poster for "The Wicker Man" is somewhat simliar (see for instance at http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MMPO/505183~Wicker-Man-Posters.jpg) in that it featured Nicolas Cage's head made up of bees.

Ari said...

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2008/03/27/bangkok-dangerous-poster-2.jpg