Back in the olden days of yore, Hollywood studios didn’t have to do much more than run a few newspaper ads in order to get the word out about their new releases. These days, however, both media outlets and audiences are increasingly splintered, so studios have been implementing some outside-the-bun marketing plans in order to reach their target demographics. And in the case of the Weinstein Company’s upcoming release of Inglourious Basterds, that means actively reaching out to people whose love for seeing fake blood get spilled onscreen is only eclipsed by their love of seeing real blood get spilled in an eight-sided cage.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Zeitchik, Quentin Tarantino’s latest effort is going to be prominently featured at this weekend’s UFC 100 tournament, a mixed-martial-arts competition in which bloodthirsty young males cheer on modern-day gladiators battling inside an eight-sided steel cage known as “the Octagon.†(And no, we’re not referring to the nickname for Paul Rudd’s testicles in Anchorman.) The event, which will be held this Saturday at the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas and will be simultaneously broadcast to an audience of thousands on pay-per-view, will featured “an animated [Inglourious Basterds] billboard and placement inside the fighting ring, and a trailer will be shown to about 11,000 fans in attendance at Mandalay Bay.†We certainly can’t knock the strategy of selling a movie about scalping Nazis to an audience that will be pounding back Bud Lights with reckless abandon while waiting for someone to get knocked out stone-cold, but we are a bit fearful to see what the next step in their marketing plan will be. Based on what we’ve seen in the trailer, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them schedule some sort of a cross-promotion with the Louisville Slugger company.
UFC fighters are basterds [Risky Business Blog via Videogum]