If the movie is good, it should sell itself. I think FOX is definitely taking a step in the right direction by releasing it in December, versus the packed summer movie season. With relatively little competition, I'm hoping VDT will continue to perform well into January.

In terms of marketing, I think the studio needs to focus its efforts on the adventure aspect of the film, and definitely keep the character emphasis on Edmund, Lucy, and Caspian, characters that audiences are already familiar with, instead of having a focus on Eustace.

I'm sure we will see a teaser trailer in the coming months, and the full trailer around October, which should be fine.

Personally, I am planning on seeing the movie, probably with my entire family. If it is good and worth seeing more than once, I will definitely do so, and spread the word to friends, not only by word of mouth, but also through Facebook and Twitter.

Maybe PC wasn't advertised in the right way, but I don't think we should say that it was underadvertised. If you look at Fantasia_Kitty's awsome movie timelines, you can see that PC was advertised at least as much as LWW, possibly more. They even had a Superbowl TV spot and later a supertrailer.

VDT's advertising manager should emphasise the feelings of discovery and amazement that are inherent in VDT to help draw in the same audience that made LWW big. Trailers and posters should focus on the amazing new lands and strange creatures that the voyagers will encounter, and spend minimal space and time on battles and conflict. I have a feeling that it was those aspects of PC that were instrumental in the cut back on theatre revenues, to a good extent at least.

I don't think the problem was with how much Disney advertised PC, it was how they advertised it. The ads they created had a whole split-personality disorder thing going. They couldn't decide who they were aiming the movie at or what kind of tone they wanted. Of course, a lot of that is Adamson's fault for trying to do a PG rated action flick, but Disney didn't help with their advertising.

I think 'Dawn Treader' should be marketed in Christian bookstores and church groups like 'Wardrobe' was. The Christian audience will always be the most enthusiastic and die-hard crowd.

As far as how they should market it, it should look more like 'Wardrobe'- more magical and, for goodness' sake, less epic.

Interesting... Aslan's Country has a post from yesterday quoting CinemaBlend:

Dawn Treader doesn’t come out until December, but with a film of this magnitude don’t be shocked if we see a teaser coming out within the next few weeks.

No idea how much CinemaBlend knows on these matters, but I'm hopeful!

Proper marketing for VDT begins with having a film that has a better focus. PC tried to be all things to all people and failed, and lost most of the charm that audiences enjoyed in LWW. Having Adamson do interviews in which he repeatedly said PC was darker and grittier than LWW was incredibly foolish from a marketing perspective, especially with a family film.

Promotion for LWW went pretty well. Disney/Walden started behind the scenes videos in December 2004, a year before the movie came out in theaters. So far, Fox/Walden have put out two blog entries - on Facebook, mind you, not narnia.com - which seems a little ... cheap.

I hope they concentrate the marketing closer to the actual release...a GOOD teaser trailer with the summer movie blockbusters, a full trailer in early/mid-October, and a supertrailer about a week before release. (Note to Fox: Please give all audiences the super-trailer before release. The PC super-trailer came out after the film's US debut!)

Otherwise, they should market to faith-based groups and do a better job of getting the word out. And, find a subtle way to let audiences know VDT is a lot like LWW.

Interesting... Aslan's Country has a post from yesterday quoting CinemaBlend:

Dawn Treader doesn’t come out until December, but with a film of this magnitude don’t be shocked if we see a teaser coming out within the next few weeks.

No idea how much CinemaBlend knows on these matters, but I'm hopeful!

Don't get your hopes too high. I believe they're still doing some last minute pick-up filming right now... let alone having completed shots to put into a trailer. I for one WILL be shocked to see a trailer in the next few weeks.

As far as what I would like to see...
~a nice steady build of excitement starting with online postings (two blogs are a great start)
~pictures being steadily released
~a trailer during the huge summer movie season
~more pictures and maybe some video blogs
~a month or two before the movie's release, a GOOD trailer
~lots of reading material with pretty pictures.

In terms of marketing, I think the studio needs to focus its efforts on the adventure aspect of the film, and definitely keep the character emphasis on Edmund, Lucy, and Caspian, characters that audiences are already familiar with, instead of having a focus on Eustace.

I respectfully disagree. New characters can excite interest in a movie. I think that an emphasis on Eustace might be a good draw. He is the most interesting character in the book, and quite colorful. I think a teaser (or at least a commercial) devoted entirely to Eustace is likely, and could be very good marketing. There may be people out there who think that the heroes of Narnia are too goody-goody. A brat like Eustace might be just the thing to get them interested...

^ This is a really interesting point because of how strange it worked out with Prince Caspian. On one hand, they really pushed advertisement on Caspian because the movie was called... Prince Caspian! But everyone was really wanting to see the characters (Pevensies) they were familiar with.

But when the movie finally came out, I was surprised to see how much of Caspian's role had been cut from the book to movie and the Pevensies sort of overshadowed him. I don't think many people got attached to Caspian they way they did the Pevensies in LWW.

I feel a proper and equal balance needs to be met here, and I don't think it's going to be nearly as difficult as it was with PC because Eustace is constantly with Edmund and Lucy. And they MUST get the audience attached to Eustace because like it or not, he's going to be carrying on the series.

This is tricky.

In my head I'm like 'come on trailers, posters, behind the scenes', but when I think about it - I would rather they waited until summer for the main bulk of it, I wouldn't want any campaign to run out of steam.

I think if they focus more on the characters, returning and new - I imagine Eustace will be a much "better" character to bring people in than Caspian, not that Caspian isn't lovely, but I get the vibe Eustace lends himself better to advertisement.

I don't know! I just hope it's done with more thought (I suppose that's the word I'm looking for) this time. I'm sure Fox will handle it fine.
x

And so it begins...

LWW marketing plan seemed to capitalize on word of mouth, product placement in stores, and a steady build up in advertising and it worked well.

PC's marketing seemed to come and go and then just dump everything out all at once.

I would prefer a return to the LWW style. The free publicity they got with the open set of the Dawn Treader was a great start. All of us who like to follow movies from the beginning got to see things without learning details of scenes and such that we will see with the finished product. The blog via facebook is nice, but I would have preferred a blog on the website with a link to it from facebook.

I just went and saw the new narnia.com. I'm impressed. The logo is very classy from a graphic design point of view. It is a good change from the flat logos of the past and it also builds upon them.

I'd probably like to see a few more blogs, a couple of official pictures, and a steady development of the web site. All before the teaser trailer comes out. Then a teaser that doesn't give much of the plot away. More of a montage of images with a few taglines. Then seeing more official pictures and web site development. No tv commercials at least until the release of the trailer if not confined to within a month of the movie release. One trailer with a possible second within just a couple of weeks before the movie release. And please balance the trailers better than the PC one! Don't over emphasize the battles!

About a month to two before the movie release start seeing a push for the books in the bookstores. Bring them back to the forefront and develop a merchandise line better than the PC one. The LWW one was superior to PC. Product placement is key in advertising because it gives a subtle "hey over here! look what's coming up!" push to people that you may not normally catch and acts as a reinforcement to the ones who already know about it.

A slow and steady buildup will probably do the film a world of good because it'll keep peoples' interest as well as bring in new ones as the hype grows.

I agree that it should be marketed like LWW. With alot of publicity resources given to Churches and youth groups and such...I would like to see alot of Eustace in the trailers but I want the Pevensies to be in them more than they were in the PC trailers...

I have this really bad feeling about VDT's chances of being a big enough hit. My main concern is that it's a big enough hit to make The Silver Chair. It's slightly unfair that Harry Potter fans don't have to worry about their franchise being in danger, even though not all the films were at the top of the money lists (though they were near the top).

As for the actual media campaign, they're on the right track with the release date. If I were one of the producers, I would be looking get some sort of trailer attached to 1) The Last Airbender---because it's in more or less the same film genre, 2) Shrek 4---still attached to Andrew Adamson's name, 3) HP7p.2---again, the kind of audience you want to get for the movie.

(just moved this from a different topic. this seems like the more relevant place for my ranting)

I've often pointed out that Hollywood judges success and failure by profitability, rather than popularity - a fact exemplified in that Twilight was considered a pop-culture "phenomenon" despite fewer people actually going to see it than Prince Caspian, which was itself considered a "failure". And perhaps its fair enough that Twilight receives the kudos in that example, since it managed to make alot of money on a very small budget, and that can be a very hard thing to do in this day and age.

But today, i was positively stunned to learn that JJ Abrams' Star Trek movie from last year - a big budget summer movie which was hailed as a massive boxoffice success that had single handedly brought the Star Trek franchise back from the dead and made the whole Trek Universe financially viable again (Empire magazine even suggested it even deserved an Oscar nomination for this fact?!) - did in fact only make $385 million worldwide. I don't need to tell you that this is alot less than Prince Caspian's $419 million.

And it would seem the main reason for this disparity in public and professional opinion over those two movie's relative success would be that Star Trek (and also Twilight it should be noted) both wiped the floor with Prince Caspian in the US Boxoffice, even though they both lagged well behind overall.

With that in mind, i'd be very tempted to suggest that Fox don't even bother promoting the film internationally and just put everything into the US market. If the <5% of the world's population that live in the USA are considered more vital to a movie's financial success than the >95% of the worlds population that live everywhere else then it seems like a no-brainer to me.