I’ve been quoted in this week’s Entertainment Weekly, but I don’t really like how it turned out. I must have stumbled through my now standard answer to the “has the publicity already peaked” question. What I apparently said was “I feel bad, because this has hit a plateau, I don’t know if it will keep going up.” What I normally say is something about how it’s unreasonable to expect publicity for any event to build in a straight line from zero to extremely high, peaking right when the event occurs. You have to expect peaks and valleys along the way. No, I don’t think the media attention will stay as sharply focused from now until August as it has been for the last two weeks, but I do think that there will be peaks again again in the future… for example when they release the official poster, or trailer, or when the actors start doing real PR. This was but one peak in a long process. That’s how I meant to answer.
But then again, they really shouldn’t be asking me for publicity predictions. I don’t work in Hollywood and I know nothing about how to publicize a movie. They really should be asking “buzz” questions to New Line, or someone on their own staff. They’ve dealt with this kind of thing before, I haven’t.
Anyway, for those of you interested here’s a link to the Entertainment Weekly story (subscription required) on their website and here’s scans of the two pages from the actual magazine (no subscription required):
I am a big fan of their graphic, it looks great. They also mention in the story that to make the movie more ‘R’ rated they’ve added “blood and breasts” as well as gorier death scenes.
Every time someone quotes David Ellis, he sounds really excited about the movie. I wonder if that’s just something you do with every movie you work on, or if it’s genuine?
Yeah, I’m a subscriber, I noticed your comment the other day. As for his excitement, in this case I imagine it is genuine. He has to be pleasantly surprised by how things have turned out. After all, how many times does a filmmaker get called in by the studio to add stuff into a movie, instead of remove it?