Every other day Marvel gives out some facts about their future plans. Do they still have to learn or do they just not care. They own the rights to every comic book figure anyway, so who should they fear? Marvel Vice Chairman Peter Cuneo spoke about Marvel’s future ideas at the Wedbush Morgan Securities Conference.

He says ‘Iron Man’ showed them how they don’t have to use high-profile characters to make a big hit. “Iron Man shows that we can take our lesser known characters, reach into the storyline of our comic books and make them into valuable, really, “brands” for us. Each of these characters becomes a brand that we can market.“

Continue reading Marvel certainly isn’t tight-lipped

Was Universal expecting ‘Iron Man’ to be this big? I don’t know. They probably didn’t think they were getting the second prize by buying the ‘The Incredible Hulk’ distribution rights, while Paramount bought ‘Iron Man.’ But now Universal is using ‘Iron Man’ to sell ‘The Incredible Hulk’ to their audience. People who are currently calling MovieTickets.com for ‘Iron Man’ tickets are receiving a paid advertising message.

The computer will ask the caller, “Like Tony Stark? See more of him in ‘Incredible Hulk’ in theaters on June 13. Press 1 to get a text message reminder…” If they do, they will get a SMS the day before ‘The Incredible Hulk’ opens. “We’ve done audio ads for ticketing sites in the past. This was a really cool opportunity to contextually target and serve the ad to a really relevant, hyper-targeted audience, and have the ability to re-target them,” Megan Crowell of advertising agency Ignited said.

Apptera, the company that implemented the message, said the campaign saw a 3% sign-up rate. “What the studio wants to do is get a big opening weekend, to have these time bombs, people carrying cell phones that start buzzing on opening day,” they said. So there you have it. Hollywood’s new way to target you, cell phones. Last month we saw a similar idea with the new Batman movie. Some people got a call about ‘The Dark Knight,’ with some questions about Harvey Dent.

O, that’s going to hurt. But the box office drops actually weren’t that bad this week. Here are the numbers.

1. What Happens in Vegas
Saturday and Sunday: $9,292,335 million
Monday and Tuesday: $2,759,458 million
Drop: 70%

2. Iron Man
Saturday and Sunday: $23,179,757 million
Monday and Tuesday: $5,292,110 million
Drop: 77%

3. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Saturday and Sunday: $35,637,062 million
Monday and Tuesday: $7,978,137 million
Drop: 78%

Continue reading The post-weekend box office drop