WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SPLIT!
I now assume you have either seen Split or just don't care (but if you're a fan of early Shyamalan films I recommend you see it).
Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken wrote a script called The Cellar that was picked up by Bad Robot. The script underwent a rewrite by Damien Chazelle and Dan Trachtenberg was hired as director. The name was changed to Valencia and the film went into production. In January 2016, a trailer played infront of Thursday night screenings of 13 Hours. It featured the logos for Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot, and showed Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr. and John Goodman living together to the tune of Tommy James & The Shondells' I Think We're Alone Now. As the trailer progressed the song got slower and more eerie as the trailer takes a darker and more sinister tone. Winstead is shown hitting Goodman with a bottle and trying to escape. She reaches a door at the top of a staircase and opens it and starts to open a second door. "From producer J.J. Abrams". Goodman warns her of the outside and says that they will all die. We see Winstead's shocked face as she looks outside. And the title "10 Cloverfield Lane" comes up, release date of March 11th 2016, just under two months away.
On April 11th 2015, Bloody Disgusting writer Jonathan Barkan published an article in which he suspected that writing duo Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's upcoming film The Woods would in fact be a new film in the Blair Witch franchise. Then, 13 months later, Lionsgate released the teaser trailer for The Woods. It featured quotes from several critics who had seen it early, praising it for how scary and inventive it is. I remember seeing comments on both YouTube and IMDB from people asking the question of "Is this a Blair Witch Sequel?" Finally, on July 22nd, at San Diego Comic Con, it was officially announced that The Woods' real title was Blair Witch, and would be a follow up to the 1999 original. The breadcrumbs had been left since the start, with a Kickstarter page made by a fake profile for a fake documentary had comments and contributions from other fake profiles was set up in February 2014. The page was part of the viral marketing for Blair Witch and is proof that the idea had been around for a while.
The first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's Split was released on July 27th 2016 and showed the premise of the film: a man with dissociative identity disorder who has 23 distinct personalities abducts three teenage girls. It featured its release date of January 20th 2017. At Fantastic Fest, 26th September's secret screening was revealed to be Split. It was a confident move from Universal, believing that the film's twist would not be leaked online in the four months before it's release. It was also shown at AFI Fest on November 15th. The twist was still safe. The film is in cinemas now and I saw it on the second day of release. When the film ends and the title comes up, people ate getting up to leave. Then a news report is shown on a TV as people continue to leave. The camera moves to show a diner and the news report refers to Kevin as "The Horde". A woman turns to her friend and says she is reminded of "a guy in a wheelchair fifteen years ago" and asks what his name was. The man next to her is shown to be Bruce Willis with a name tag with "Dunn" on it. He answers her question: "Mr Glass". The credits start to roll. Split was secretly part of the same universe as Shyamalan's Unbreakable.
At the time I had not seen Unbreakable, so at first I thought "What's the point of that scene and why was Bruce Willis there?" Then I started to try and figure it out: "Okay, Bruce was a ghost in The Sixth Sense so it has nothing to do with that. He was also in Unbreakable, but was he in any other Shyamalan films? No. Hold on, was this a secret sequel to Unbreakable?" My suspicions were confirmed when I was walking down the stairs and a guy near me was talking about how Shyamalan always wanted to do a sequel to Unbreakable.
The three films are all connected by the fact that they were secret sequels (or as I like to call them, 'secrels' ). The difference was how the secret was kept. There weren't any reports that Valencia was a Cloverfield sequel before the trailer was shown in cinemas 8 weeks prior to its release. As stated, there was the report by Bloody Disgusting about The Woods and The Blair Witch Project, and plenty of speculation once the teaser trailer was released. All before the confirmation of Blair Witch 8 weeks before its release. Bruce Willis' cameo in Split was kept secret until the Fantastic Fest screening. Then the connection between Split and Unbreakable was kept secret from the public until opening weekend.
Two out of three of the films enjoyed great success. 10 Cloverfield Lane opened at number 2 in America with
$24.7 million and earned $108.3 million worldwide. Split opened at number 1 in America with $40 million and has so far made $112.6 million. On the other hand, Blair Witch opened at number 2 with $9.6 million and earned $45.2 million worldwide. None of the films had high budgets and they all made quite a profit, but Blair Witch made a lot less money than the others and wasn't well received, while both 10 Cloverfield Lane and Split were.
With the critical, public and financial success of two out of three of these recent 'secrels', is the film industry going to embrace this way of filmmaking and marketing?
In recent months I have stopped watching trailers online because I like to go into films knowing as little as possible, so I like the idea of 'secrels' becoming a common thing. If there are to be more it is likely that it will continue to be low budget films that are almost tests to see if there is interest in these franchises. There is already rumours that Bad Robot's God Particle will actually be the third film in the Cloverfield franchise; and it would make sense. There is the Bad Robot and Paramount link, J.J. Abrams is producing and is released in Autumn, several months after Transformers: The Last Knight is released (if they are continuing with releasing the trailer in front of a Michael Bay movie).
I see 'secrels' continuing with low budget franchises, but high budget franchises are more risky. It would stop the oversaturation of trailers and marketing in the months leading up to the release of high profile films, but it's not going to happen. Some blockbuster films are marketed over a year in advance so it looks unlikely that the 'secrel' will become a common thing there. I would be really happy if at Star Wars Celebration, Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy came on stage and said "On May 26th, nearly 40 years to the day after the original Star Wars was released in cinemas, Disney and Lucasfilm will release The Last Jedi." The crowd goes wild, and through the noise you can hear them saying the Pirates of the Caribbean 5 will be released in December and they "are going to show a 1:30 minute trailer that will be the only trailer. And here is the official poster". That's not going to happen but that is the way I would hope 'secrels' will eventually play out with high budget films.
'Secrels' are a shining example of avoiding spoilers being released early for franchise films. If 'secrels' become big in the future, then it's a sign that marketing could be a lot better done than it currently is, and can help improve the experience of watching a film. Now if my dream of The Last Jedi being released in May and a Chronicle sequel is announced for release in April, then 2017 will be a good year.
No comments:
Post a Comment