Unless you have some kind of life-in which case, God bless you-you’ve probably followed the sordid tale of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak. And if you’re like me, and you REALLY have no life, you’ve followed the minor drama surrounding the leak amongst “noted” online film geek bloggers and writers, some of whom were pretty quick to leap up on their crippled, emaciated high horses and proclaim they’d not be covering the leaked film, even as they prepared to review unproduced scripts and post obscurely-sourced toy packaging images to offer an early glimpse of what Destro will look like.
(I mean, I love the grey area-I live in it, and I dance in it, and it’s fun as hell-but let’s not pretend that somehow the leak is some egregious sin against the Hollywood gods, when anyone who reads CHUD, Ain’t It Cool, or HitFix on a regular basis must clearly glory in the illicit thrill of reading about a movie that isn’t out yet, or seeing things they’re not technically meant to be seeing. As must those who write the articles and posts about said illicit content.)
So then FoxNews.com columnist Roger Friedman allegedly downloaded the flick and reviewed it, earning instant ire from Drew “Moriarity” McWeeny, who demanded that Friedman be fired, which he then was. Coming from someone who sorta feels okay thinking sometimes that Dan Didio at DC Comics should be fired, I realize this is weak sauce, but DAMN. Talk about using unfounded moral superiority to overreact to a largely meaningless situation.
That’s all background, because all of it is just some louder-than-usual white noise buzzing around the geekier portions of the internet. What I’m interested in are the reactions of Fox marketing and PR, and how woefully inadequate they’ve been in dealing with this situation. Fox seriously dropped the ball here, and I’m about to tell you how, so fasten your safety belts and place your seatbacks and tray tables in the upright and locked position.
To Hollywood, the illegal downloading of movies is scary business. I understand that. And absolutely, sic the FBI on whoever leaked the flick, because if there’s anyone who needs the fear of God in their souls after this incident, it’s the countless middle-men, flunkies, and edit bay jockeys who regularly find themselves in possession of these early cuts.
From a marketing and PR perspective, however, what this situation demanded was swift, fierce, proactive motion, a forward momentum of movement and action designed to get the true final cut of the movie out there into the world through these geek bloggers/writers, through the army of comic book nerds, and through whatever other source they could lay their hands on.
1) Screen the shit out of the actual movie. Typically these screenings will be happening anyway, a week or two out, with free passes handed out at comic book stores to help stoke the buzz just prior to release. I think a first round of these should have happened this weekend, or should be happening this week, positioned to take advantage of the locations of these geek website elite. Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, New York. Pack the place with nerds and rope off a few rows for the nerderati.
2) Ban Roger Friedman from these screenings, or any screenings at all, for the forseeable future. Make it noisy, make it loud, make it obvious he’s off the Fox gravy train. This would almost have been a worse punishment than firing him-he’ll land somewhere else, he’ll probably land quickly, and he’ll be able to capitalize on his newfound pariah status to generate content and heat. Kept captive at a Fox site but unable to cover big Fox projects would just be a slap in the face, and if he whined about it, he would probably be greeted with a loud and hearty “who gives a fuck.” (Well, louder and heartier than the “who gives a fuck” he usually gets-he writes for FOX NEWS, for chrissakes.)
3) Trot out some serious clips of finished FX. In effect, show us the cool parts, or most of them, NOW. Because anyone with half a brain can go out today and see the whole damn movie, minus some of the cool parts (as I understand it, at least; I haven’t watched it myself). You want people to understand that what they’ve seen for free online has nothing to do with the finished product? Prove it.
4) Trot out the stars for some serious high-end damage control. I’m not talking about Leno and Letterman; that will come anyway in a few weeks. I’m talking about Hugh Jackman showing up at Harry Knowles’ house to personally screen for him a print of the final cut. I’m talking about Liev Schrieber bouncing little Toshe McWeeny on his knee and taping an exclusive video interview. Serious, unmitigated, obvious nerd ass-kissing. Sure, the sites will see through it, but they’ll still enjoy it, and write about it. Hell, even the stars and the publicists can be up-front and honest about what they’re doing-pimping the hell out of this film in the face of a potential first-weekend disaster.
5) Pimp out the movie, one last time. Fly Jackman in for a “super secret” set of reshoots (of course, leaked directly to the nerdweb) where he pals around with Samuel L. Jackson for five minutes, or Halle Berry, or even Ellen Page. That, or cut together a quickie teaser for whatever the next big Fox monstrosity will be-or even beg your buddies at Marvel Studios to help you out with a teaser for Iron Man 2. Something to reignite the buzz just long enough to get through to May 1.
Clearly, Fox marketing and PR has decided (or has been ordered so) that sitting on their hands and trusting their outmoded methods of Tonight Show couch time, TV commercial blankets, and fluff pieces by junketeers to save them is the wisest course of action. I don’t think it is. There’s a groundswell of negative buzz, which may happen no matter what if the movie sucks, but the movie’s also becoming defined by the leak, when it should be defined as what it is-the launch of the 2009 summer movie season, a big-ass tentpole monster that will stomp on all comers until Star Trek hits screens a week later.
Even if they’d jumped on all this immediately, it might still have been too little, too late. But come on, Fox. At least go down swinging, instead of ceding a big-time blockbuster movie to us dweebs online, with our torrents and our pwns and our tweets.
NAME: Sarah
NAME: Matt
NAME: Jeff
NAME: Chris
I think it’s a bit… off for Drew McWeeny to call for a reviewer’s head on a platter for reviewing a leaked print of a movie when you consider the sort of behavior that AICN condones and encourages from its readers. I understand that he’s a screenwriter himself and blah blah blah but get over yourself.
Great piece, and I think you’re right on with your analysis of how Fox should have handled this.
I’m also fascinated by the evolution of the geek web. We all know this is the sort of thing AICN would have been all over back in the early days, but now it seems like a lot of these sites feel like they’re in a place where they can cast stones. Which is fine, I guess, but the loudness of the, er, casting is just a little eyeroll-inducing.
there are reports circulating now that friedman wasn’t actually fired by fox. did fox have a change of heart or is there just tons of disinformation swirling on the interwebs?
and gee whiz, if the sheer awesomeness of attack of the clones was enough to trigger re-shoots for the two towers, why on earth is the leak not enough to do the same for wolverine?? at the very least they could tack a robert downey jr. cameo on to the end…
Jeff, Sarah: Yeah, I’m sure McWeeny and Knowles et al feel perfectly secure casting stones from their gigantic homes cast from glass, but I do miss the days when it was more of a tense relationship between the internet and the studios, if only because there was more of a risk of real scoopage being gotten, and what passes for “investigative reporting” on the internet, where some random bit from the trash could become a major story. Remember when Harry got in huge trouble for leaking character designs for Starship Troopers? Now the prelim photo leak/post/c&d cycle is so ingrained it’s got to be a prearranged part of the marketing process, for the studios if not for the webmasters.
stever: A RDJ cameo would be perfect, and especially easy to accomplish since they just yesterday started shooting on Iron Man 2. Again, a bit of a “save” for Marvel to allow that to help a Fox flick, but I think it would boost the Marvel brand overall, especially since this is essentially a “summer off” for the true Marvel Studios films that are part of the massive Iron Man/Cap/Thor/Avengers sequence.