If there’s one single thing about movie marketing I absolutely cannot stand, it’s the bait and switch. It usually happens when either the studio knows they have a dog on their hands through test marketing, or they find themselves with a movie on their hands that defies a target market. I remember there was a big stink from fans of the 2012 movie John Carter, based on the John Carter of Mars series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, because of a weak and ineffective marketing campaign. The trouble here was with the movie, a wretched piece of badly written drivel. When movies can spend close to $100 million alone on marketing, sometimes a movie is just so poor that the studio cuts its losses and declines to throw good money after bad. An example of not knowing who to market to is the recent movie A Monster Calls, with an ad campaign that tried to appeal to the same crowd as those who loved The Iron Giant and The BFG. Last night’s movie, Shut In, is a classic example of marketing bait and switch.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 