“‘Midnight in Paris’ has secret formula to lure adult moviegoers”

Patrick Goldstein at The Big Picture blog (LAT) analyzes the surprise box office success of Woody Allen’s new movie Midnight in Paris:

Marketing muscle can get millions of wide-eyed fanboys to see a $150-million comic book superhero movie. But if you want to earn some real respect from your peers in the movie marketing trade, you have to do something really daunting, such as turning Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” into the surprise hit of the summer.

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Sony Classics had some unique publicity issues with “Midnight in Paris”: Allen was willing to do only a limited amount of publicity around the film’s Cannes Film Festival debut in May. According the Sony Classics team, the film’s lead actress, Rachel McAdams, didn’t do any press, and the film’s leading man, Owen Wilson, was already committed to spend his media firepower on “Cars 2,” a Pixar blockbuster that opened in late June, several weeks after Allen’s film arrived in theaters.

Undaunted, the Sony Classics team decided to take a lemon and make lemonade. They obtained a list of reporters who were invited to the “Cars 2” junket and sent them press notes from “Midnight in Paris,” encouraging them to ask Wilson questions about the Allen film during the Pixar media day. Wilson happily complied, answering queries about his character in “Paris” that provided material for a host of stories about the movie. Sony Classics also got a hold of Wilson’s schedule of TV appearances to promote “Cars 2” on shows like “The Late Show with David Letterman,” then bought ad time for “Paris” spots on the nights when Wilson was a guest.

“It was a total guerrilla marketing campaign because we just don’t have the kind of money that a big studio has at its disposal,” explains Sony Classics co-chairman Tom Bernard, who says his company has spent $10 million marketing the Allen film, a fraction of what a studio shells out for a summer tentpole film. “If you’re going to reach adult moviegoers, you have to use your imagination. When we were buying ads, we went through the TV guide, not the ratings book, because we were trying to find our specific audience, not just the show with the biggest ratings.”

Bernard says Sony Classics bought national TV spots on the Tony Awards, CBS Sunday Morning News and late-night talk shows, but spent much of its kitty on local ad buys. “You’re always thinking — where is that older audience,” he says. “We bought time on the Weather Channel and the Cooking Channel, but we also did buys on a lot of local baseball games, especially on Friday night and Saturday day games, because baseball broadcasts definitely deliver an older audience.”

Hey, here’s an angle in analyzing the success of the movie: Perhaps because the lead character is a screenwriter! Yes, the world is just fascinated by screenwriters with writer’s block.

Or maybe not.

Actually what I was going to say is that the “older audience” has proven time and again it will show up at theaters in numbers if the movie is a good one. So while the marketing scheme on this one appears to have been pretty clever, per usual the success goes back to the movie itself:

Sony Classics believes its Allen film hasn’t peaked yet, with the picture still playing on 850 screens across the country. It is starting to attract a younger audience, which could give it a longer tail as it dips into a wider demographic. With people still worried about the economy, “Midnight in Paris” seems to be serving as a virtual getaway for some viewers.

“I was talking to the head film buyer at AMC Theaters who’d gone to see the film over the 4th of July weekend,” Barker says. “He said that when he left the theater, his wife said, ‘I felt like we’d just been to Paris on vacation.’ And I think a lot of people feel that way. For 94 minutes, they’re transported somewhere magical and far away. It makes them feel good.”

“For 94 minutes, they’re transported somewhere magical and far away. It makes them feel good.” If you write a spec script that achieves that for a reader, chances are you’re going to get a lot of work as a screenwriter.

For more of Goldstein’s article, go here.

Who here has seen Midnight in Paris? Thumbs up or thumbs down? I am willing to bet Allen receives a Best Original Screenplay nomination for the Academy Awards.

UPDATE: Teddy P makes a point in comments:

The best thing about the marketing was how they didn’t reveal the “magic.” Kudos for keeping that a secret. It also had a very classy one-sheet that captured the essence of the film. Great choice to keep it simple and only feature the protagonist instead of the whole cast — that would have ruined it.

Concur. Compare this trailer:

To another one set in Europe Letters to Juliet which gives away every single major Plotline point in the movie:

Everybody loves Midnight in Paris. You want to show Hollywood you support good filmmaking and good stories? Go see this movie!

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