Omelete scored two exclusive ‘The Dark Knight’ banners. It shows the great distinctive style of the $150 million Batman movie. This will likely be the next ‘Iron Man’ in terms of box office. It may even fly past the Marvel hero, since sequels tend to do a little better in the theaters. And if one movie got positive buzz on the internet these days, it’s ‘The Dark Knight.’

Christian Bale and Heath Ledger will hit the theaters July 18.

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.

Farlanders

Release date: TBA, 2009
Budget: unknown

Director: Sam Mendes
Actors: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jeff Daniels
Produced by: Big Beach Films, Neal Street and Edward Saxon Productions
Filming location: Connecticut

There isn’t as much info on ‘Farlanders’ as in our last ‘In production’ post about ‘Bunraku,’ but I’ll work with what I’ve got here. ‘Farlanders’ is Sam Mendes’ sixth movie since he made it big with ‘American Beauty’ in 1999. Yes, it’s almost ten years since you first saw ‘American Beauty,’ which got no less than 5 Oscars.

Continue reading In production: ‘Farlanders’