When people think of making a movie, they often think of writers crammed together in a room clacking away on their keyboards; of cameras rolling, sound speeding, directors yelling and actors crying on cue. What they usually don’t think of is a public relations team meticulously planning a campaign, but the marketing of a movie can pave the way to its box office success…or demise.
“Publicity campaigns for films are extremely strategic and planned out well in advance in some cases,” said Professor Nam Sumski who teaches Annenberg’s Public Relations in Entertainment class. “A lot depends upon who is involved in the film – stars, producers, directors, writers – and that can help shape interviews and how much they are in front of the media.”
However, unlike recent star-studded movies with successful PR campaigns like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” “Joker: Folie á Deux” and “Megalopolis” have failed to meet previous high standards.
After the release of “Joker” in October of 2019, budgeted at $65 million, buzz about a potential sequel rippled across social media. Although director Todd Phillips conceived the Academy Award-winning movie as a standalone film, he confirmed the “Joker: Folie á Deux” sequel in June 2022. A series of Instagram posts from Phillips and Lady Gaga validated rumors that the new psychological thriller was taking a bold new musical-esque approach.
This past weekend, the $200 million budget “Joker: Folie á Deux” bombed at the box office with a measly $37.8 million opening. Bad reviews permeated the internet, calling the movie a flop in scathing terms. Even though both Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix have a cult following, the PR campaign lacked interviews to promote the stars.
“A celebrity’s role in PR has a huge impact on initial public perception, we often go see movies simply because our favorite stars are in them. Celebrity has value in its own right,” said USC Annenberg Professor Nazli Senyuya Offringa, Ph.D, who teaches a Business and Culture of Celebrity class. “Especially in the age of social media, where we first hear about upcoming movies and watch trailers on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. If you miss that mark, people might not be aware that your movie is coming out.”
For the second installation of the DC “Joker” franchise, consider the mark missed. The sequel was simply not promoted as a musical. At the 2024 Venice Film Festival, Lady Gaga told press she “wouldn’t necessarily say that this is actually a musical […] it’s very different, the way the music is used to really give the characters a way to express what they need to say because the scene and just the dialogue is not enough.”
But, Miss Gaga, isn’t that exactly what a musical is?
Reviewers previously complained about Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s “Mean Girls” shying away from the “musical” label as well. Why are studio publicity campaigns allergic to the term? Casting a co-star with 13 Grammy Awards on her shelf is hardly a deterrent for a movie-musical, so why didn’t the Harley Quinn publicity take that in stride?
“I think Phillips was aware of the fact that fans of his Joker, a psychological thriller, would not necessarily be fans of musicals,” said Offringa. “So they didn’t want to risk alienating the fans that brought in a billion dollars in the box office the first time around, yet the word is out, and it is a musical, so they did very poorly. Modern audiences crave and reward authenticity. The mismatch between the marketing campaigns and the actual product felt ‘inauthentic’ to the OG fans, who might not return to the theater to see the sequel.”
The main question of a song’s role in a musical is if it’s additive to the character’s arc. In “Joker: Folie á Deux,” they were anything but. Reviewers have actually asked if the singing was bad on purpose. However, even as fans squabble over the movie’s ending and poke fun at the plot, at least they knew the film was coming out — unlike “Megalopolis.”
Francis Ford Coppola, best known for directing “The Godfather” trilogy, has tried to get “Megalopolis” off the ground since the story occurred to him in the early 1970s. The science fiction epic was started and abandoned multiple times over the past decades due to development and financial issues.
Finally, according to The Wall Street Journal, Coppola sold a large portion of his wine estate to self-fund his passion project with $120 million of his own fortune. A month after filming began, the visual effects team, production designer, and supervising art director all either got fired or left the chaotic set.
The PR team must have walked off as well because viewers are only now becoming aware of the film after seeing bad reviews. Even though the science fiction epic has a studded star cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman and even Grace VanderWaal with her ukelele, no one seems to have heard about the mega-budget movie. Perhaps it’s because Coppola’s wine vineyard money dried up when it came to marketing strategy.
“Coppola assumed that his own celebrity capital would be enough to draw audiences and carry this film; however, that wasn’t the case,” said Offringa. “Millennials and Gen-Z do not have the same affinity towards or familiarity with Coppola’s work, so simply seeing his name is not enough for them to go buy a ticket. Leveraging the celebrity capital of more relevant A-listers in the movie, like Adam Driver and Audrey Plaza, would have made a difference in ticket sales.”
Sumski also mentioned the controversy of false reviewers — alleged AI-generated critic quotes hidden in the movie’s trailer — combined with no stars talking about the film sealed its fate.
“The rise of social media has really impacted the industry with the immediacy and almost direct interaction between the public and the stars of the film,” said Sumski. “It’s also been a help or hindrance in some instances with immediate word of mouth both good and bad.”
In this instance, bad word of mouth is plastered all across social media…the final nail in the Megalon coffin.
PR is behind every pop of popcorn, every ticket stub and every casual “movie this weekend?” text. It can make or break success. These two campaigns lacked the ability to tell the film’s story and why people should care at all. While its said story is what keeps the audience in their seats, PR is what gets people in the movie theater at all.