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Super Bowl ads: Watch ‘Noah’ get flooded, ‘Draft Day’ wheel and deal

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Viewers tune into the Super Bowl for two things: spectacle and football. Two new TV spots to air during the big game will check those boxes while teasing upcoming movies: Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic “Noah” and Ivan Reitman’s inside-the-NFL drama “Draft Day.”

Paramount’s 30-second “Noah” spot, which will air before kickoff, doesn’t show much new footage since the first trailer was released in November, but it does offer a glimpse of some big set pieces and introduce the major players.

There’s Russell Crowe’s Noah, who warns that “a great flood is coming” while the camera swoops down on him and his family, including Jennifer Connelly as his wife and Emma Watson as their adopted daughter. Ray Winstone, playing the villain Tubal-cain, raises an army and incites his men to attack Noah’s ark, shouting, “Do you want to live?!” And, of course, there are the scores of animals that take refuge aboard the ark, plus plenty of torrential rains and flooding.

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It remains to be seen whether the film, which opens March 28, can appeal to both devout audiences, who might well be wary of a biblical tale getting the blockbuster treatment, and to secular audiences, who could be turned off by the prospect of an overtly religious film.

Lionsgate, meanwhile, has its own 30-second ad lined up for the Super Bowl, and the game should provide a receptive audience for the football flick “Draft Day,” which stars Kevin Costner as a Cleveland Browns general manager blessed and burdened by a No. 1 draft pick.

“Draft Day” was made with the participation of the NFL, and the TV spot duly hypes the football angle, with cheering fans, game footage and scenes filmed at last year’s draft. “Can we talk football?” Costner asks in another moment. “We can always talk football,” Jennifer Garner replies.

One thing differentiating “Draft Day” from many football films is its focus on the front office rather than the playing field. That could turn off moviegoers expecting bone-crunching action, but if Reitman and Costner can pull off the wheeling-and-dealing angle a la “Moneyball,” they could have a promising prospect on their hands.

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