Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
LOS ANGELES: It’s a film executive’s nightmare. You need to market a $50m blockbuster, but can’t mention the biggest Hollywood name behind the project, especially when that A-list star has become infamous for drunken driving and mouthing anti-semitic comments.
It’s a dilemma facing studio bosses behind Mel Gibson’s new project, Apocalypto, as they seek to save the film, once seen as an Oscar hopeful and a potential moneyspinner.
Now the eccentric film-maker has embarked on a remarkable marketing campaign to promote Apocalypto to audiences in America’s heartland, skipping the usual media channels and going direct to the public.
And Apocalypto, set in an ancient Mayan civilisation, is starting to generate some high-quality buzz. First reports from a series of Gibson-organised test screenings have been positive. At one, the movie was given a standing ovation. Harry Knowles, a hugely influential Internet critic, said it was a “rough masterpiece” of “immense power”.
The task ahead of Gibson in promoting Apocalypto remains enormous. However, he does have a record of pulling off unlikely successes. The Passion was shunned by all the major studios, which thought the project was bound to fail. Gibson paid for it himself, marketed it through Christian grassroots networks and churches and ended up with a worldwide blockbuster that netted more than $600 million.
— The Observer
