Thursday, August 12, 2010

Scott Pilgrim is ticking the geeky boxes

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is Edgar Wright's first American film (after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and after the TV series Spaced).

Edgar has huge geek credibility, Scott Pilgrim is an established cult comic book series, and this film must be a joy to promote.  The target audience essentially live on the internet, and there are lots of ways to get them interested in the film.

Heck, one fan has even made this trailer himself, matching shots from the original trailer with frames from the comic:




Here are two uber-geeky things that the marketing people have done:


Collaboration with CubeeCraftCubeeCraft produce paper patterns to make models of cult comic book figures, and other cultural icons, so this is a pretty natural tie-up.  More on it here.


Competition on IndabaMusicIndabaMusic is an online music community.  Musicians post demos and complete songs and ask others to submit other parts (e.g. drums) or do remixes.  The Scott Pilgrim competition (in the film Scott is in a band) asks people to remix a theme for a fight scene.  Prizes come via Fender guitars, and also include the chance to work with Dan the Automator.

Just two examples of reaching out to niches.  My question would be though, is this going to focus it too much on the sort of people who would have gone to see the film anyway?

The classic case of this was Grindhouse, who managed to engage hard core fans, but seemingly left the mainstream behind. (The film didn't perform very well at the box office).  Similarly Kick Ass made a big noise online but generated less than $50m at the US box office (source).

My hope is that Scott Pilgrim is using lots of mainstream, high reach channels as well!

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