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07/24/2005: Thought for the Day:
Recently, studio executives have figured out how in-demand trailers for "event movies" are. This year, for the first time, they are exploiting them in a new way - advertising when they are going to be shown. This first happened for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Fox widely advertised that the worldwide debut of the full trailer would be during an episode of the TV show, "The O.C." The ratings spike for the episode indicated that some people were watching not because they cared about the lives of the characters, but because they wanted to see two minutes of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine. I missed the TV premiere, but caught the trailer a couple of days later before a showing of Robots.
Now, it's happening again. Universal has announced that tomorrow (Monday June 27), it will air a 150-second spot for December's King Kong remake across all of its NBC/Universal TV stations. As a bonus, it will be available in high definition (for those channels that are available in HDTV). It will start at 8:59:30 pm and conclude at 9:02:00. By revealing the time of the trailer, however, it's more like NBC is scheduling it than advertising it. This peek at Peter Jackson's King Kong just happens to be a lot shorter than anything else airing on NBC that night - and probably more entertaining.
--James Berardinelli
Len on 07.24.05 @ 09:02 AM CST
