Unexpected Events Play Havoc With ‘The Game’ Marketing

How do you market a movie when the attention of the media and the world is focused on such a tragic and dramatic event as the death of Princess Diana?

Not easily. Just ask the executives at Polygram Films who have been trying to build awareness and momentum for the new domestic distributor’s first movie release, “The Game,” a $65-million thriller starring Michael Douglas, which opens today nationwide on 2,400 screens.

Catastrophic and galvanizing events such as the death of a renowned figure, the outbreak of war or the devastation of a natural disaster rivet the public’s attention, interrupting the process of getting people to think about something as relatively mundane as a movie opening.

It’s one thing when anticipated major televised sporting events like the Olympics, the Super Bowl or the World Series keep potential moviegoers glued to their TV screens. Marketing executives know to plan around that. It’s another thing when the unexpected happens.

“All of these movie campaigns are engineered with a certain rhythm,” said Sony Pictures marketing chief Bob Levin. “You expect your advertising and publicity to hit in a certain way, at a certain time. And when events like this happen, it throws everything out of whack.”

Chris Pula, marketing chief at Warner Bros., agrees. “When something that grand takes over the airwaves, it becomes top-of-mind to every consumer.”

Though marketing executives are quick to acknowledge that the business of selling movies is trivial in the face of personal tragedy. However, with the cost of making and marketing a major studio film like “The Game” at about $85 million, there are huge business risks at stake for movie companies and opening weekends are critical.

Polygram Films Marketing President Peter Graves said that before he could even think about how Diana’s death might impact the opening of “The Game,” he had to come to grips with the tragedy, just as tens of millions of people around the world did, “so you can be clearheaded enough to analyze how to compensate for the distraction.”

Graves said the extensive media coverage of Diana’s death and funeral “certainly added further issues to the release of our film.”

It’s estimated that more than 35 million people in the United States alone watched the British princess’ televised funeral on Saturday.

“Releasing films is initially a battle for awareness,” explained Graves, who said he believes there’s a “collective awareness . . . X-amount of awareness capacity” whereby “the public can deal only with a certain amount of information” at once.

A marketing executive’s challenge is to carve out a piece of that limited awareness in a particular period just as a movie opens--a task obviously made more difficult by the distraction of a monumental global incident.

“It knocks everything else off the tabletop and considerably diminishes the public’s ability to be aware of another event,” said Graves, recalling the effects of the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War in early 1991 on the opening weekend of a film he was working on at the time, ironically titled “The Eve of Destruction” for Orion Pictures.

“I’ve seen the effect of a major news event coming into the market and disrupting the tempo and timing of trying to open a film,” he said, noting that the film grossed only $5 million, less than half of what was expected on the opening weekend.

Graves believes one of the reasons was that the film’s pre-release TV advertising campaign was preempted by the war coverage.

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That wasn’t the case with “The Game.” In fact, Graves said he only lost one spot, which was to run on “Saturday Night Live” but was preempted by the announcement of Diana’s death. There were an additional three or four spots that Polygram repositioned to run closer to the release of the film.

But “The Game,” which also stars Sean Penn, may have been hurt in the publicity arena.

Bruce Feldman, publicity consultant to Polygram, acknowledges that “The Game”--the first major release of the fall season--has attracted “less publicity than we would have ordinarily expected to receive” for a big film with one of Hollywood’s top movie stars.

The film lost key national reviews that were to run this past Monday in Time, Newsweek and People magazines. The reviews were pulled to make room for Diana coverage.

Although there’s a good chance the reviews, and a Newsweek interview with the film’s director, David Fincher, will run next Monday, after the film’s release, there are no guarantees.

“They might feel they’re not timely,” said Feldman, particularly given that next week a number of new films will open. “The Game” is the only major movie opening this weekend and would have been the lead review in the national publications.

“There could be a benefit to having the reviews run next week,” Feldman said. “It may help us with our second weekend publicity effort. But, having said that, I sure wish we had our reviews and story run this week instead of next week.”

Polygram will try to capitalize on the positive regional reviews the film received on its recent press junket. The distributor incorporated pull quotes from the junket into the TV campaign, “running it a little heavier and a little sooner than we otherwise would have, to compensate for the lack of national breaking reviews,” said Graves.

Sony’s Levin said studios try to make all sorts of adjustments “as quick as you can, but that usually means increasing your advertising and marketing budgets.” During the highly publicized O.J. Simpson trial, Levin said CNN became “the beneficiary of increased spending” because the cable network had great coverage. “Even so, you’re not sure if your message is getting through, because people aren’t exactly thinking about your movie.”

In Polygram’s view, there was another factor detracting from potentially more publicity: all the attention being paid to the paparazzi.

On various TV talk and entertainment shows that Douglas appeared on last week, including “The Today Show,” the Charlie Rose show and “Entertainment Tonight,” the star was bombarded with questions about paparazzi. Depending on the program, Feldman said, “it took the focus off the film either a little or in some cases more than a little, which was very frustrating.”

At the movie’s Hollywood premiere Monday night at Mann’s Chinese Theater, local photographers staged a protest to draw a distinction between themselves and the paparazzi, boasting a banner reading: “We Also Mourn the Death of Princess Diana. We Are Not Paparazzi! We’re INVITED to Be Here.”

Though the demonstration lasted only a matter of minutes, some news outlets covering the premiere made it the prominent element in their coverage both here and in New York.

“Some TV stations, like Channel 7, ignored it entirely,” Feldman said. “And some, like Channel 4, made that the entire focus of their coverage and made it into something disproportionate to what happened.”

One station in New York, he added, didn’t even mention the name of the movie in its coverage.

“Suddenly we were just a forum,” Feldman said. “It was frustrating.”

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All this said, it’s not clear what the ultimate impact will be on the film’s box-office performance. Polygram executives are optimistic about prospects for “The Game,” based on the way it is tracking--a measure of public awareness and want-to-see among moviegoers before a picture’s opening.

Graves said that although the tracking “hit a little bit of a hiatus” from the time Diana’s death was announced to the days leading to the funeral, “by the time the dust settled, we found ourselves back on track, exactly where we want to be.”

This weekend will be the judge of that.