Are you ready for some football? If not, are you at least ready to spend upwards of five hours in front of a television on Sunday? Even if you aren’t exactly a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers or Arizona Cardinals fan, there are some (mildly) interesting, non-football-related subplots that can keep you from passing out face-first into a bowl of queso from boredom at your Super Bowl party. For instance, you could play along with Vulture as we try to determine which soon-to-be-released films’ movie studios are going to advertise! Outside of the $3 million it costs to purchase a 30-second spot, the stakes for advertising during the Super Bowl are high: A well-produced spot can propel a film into the national consciousness, but studios are also very wary of the effects a poorly received trailer can have on a film’s box-office performance (see: The Hulk’s disastrous spot in 2003). So won’t you join along as we wildly speculate on how Hollywood executives are spending their money these days?
PARAMOUNT/DREAMWORKS ANIMATION: As we pointed out to you a few weeks back, the company is shelling out “tens of millions of dollars†to promote Monsters vs. Aliens. In 3-D, no less!
DISNEY/PIXAR: Nothing to see here, folks: They’ve bought a spot to promote the heavily anticipated Up.
PARAMOUNT: This one’s a no-brainer. Even though there’s no doubt that I Love You, Man would benefit from the exposure (this trailer always gets big laughs), Paramount is going to use the opportunity to position Star Trek as THE event movie for this May. The only question is whether we’ll see a brand-new spot, or if they’ll recycle the very well-received trailer we’ve been seeing for the past few months. That said, we’d love to FINALLY see something, anything, from G.I. Joe, but that probably isn’t going to happen. (UPDATE: On Friday night’s Entertainment Tonight, Paramount announced that they WILL be showing a commercial for G.I. Joe after all!)
SONY: This one’s a bit tougher to call. If you would’ve asked us last week, we would’ve told you 2012, all the way. But since that’s been pushed back to November, films like Pink Panther 2, the Jack Black comedy Year One, or Denzel Washington in The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 could all sneak in there. However, the wise money is on Tom Hanks in Angels & Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, coming this May.
PARAMOUNT/DREAMWORKS ANIMATION: As we pointed out to you a few weeks back, the company is shelling out “tens of millions of dollars†to promote Monsters vs. Aliens. In 3-D, no less!
UNIVERSAL: The toughest of them all to call. Uni’s lineup is stacked from now until August with films like Fast & Furious, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Bruno, and Drag Me to Hell (director Sam Raimi’s first non-Spiderman-related film since 2000’s The Gift), all clamoring for attention. While we think that there’s a very strong possibility that they’ll use the one slot they purchased to push Fast (audiences have been going bananas for this trailer), our fingers are crossed that they’ll use the opportunity to give the bazillion people watching the Super Bowl their first look at Will Ferrell in this June’s Land of the Lost.
Super Bowl XLIII Advertisers [Adweek]