The Running Man by Edgar Wright with Glen Powell, the new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, hit the theaters and exited the screens quite swiftly, turning into one of the season’s flops. In an interview with Esquire about his career, Powell shared his thoughts on the possible reasons for the debacle, shedding a brief light on a slice of Hollywood that carries enormous weight in how a film is built… a parallel sector to actual production, with its own costs but also with distinctive strategies. Advertising, to put it plainly. Let’s read what Powell stated, because he calls into play a brand that has become quite powerful in recent days.
The Running Man flop? Blame Paramount’s marketing, says Glen Powell
The costs of marketing constitute as much an element of importance as they remain opaque in Hollywood: some try to quantify them (assuming they can even know them), to add them to the production costs and keep a close tab on a studio’s finances, in order to understand how much a film has actually lost or earned. Yet the reasoning isn’t perfectly linear: although marketing can easily equal half the production budget (or in some cases even exceed it!), it is a separate expense that doesn’t fall within the same accounting. This happens because advertising really has a long tail designed to give a film an identity that continues to support it beyond its theatrical release, in the so-called “ancillary” markets of digital releases and broadcast rights, as well as in backing a potential franchise. That said, marketing remains essential for grabbing the attention of an increasingly distracted audience with a shrinking threshold of focus.
According to Glen Powell, a marketing failure within Paramount harmed The Running Man (budget around $110 million according to The Numbers, worldwide gross under $70 million, per Box Office Mojo): “I left that film in pieces, emotionally and physically [he was injured during filming]. They fired an entire marketing department a month before our film hit theaters, in the middle of a merger [Paramount’s acquisition by Skydance Media, which subsequently continued the “shopping” with Warner Bros, ndr]. There were several issues for that reason, there simply wasn’t enough time to do it properly.”
Beyond his words, Powell adds that, independent of extreme circumstances like those, in studios’ philosophy it is not uncommon for marketing outlays to be slashed when it becomes clear too late that a film isn’t working, and at that point people tend to cut costs. Naturally, in that way they end up sinking the project even further, already struggling.
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