So we finally have a picture of what Heath Ledger will look like in the next Batman movie. Through one of the more genius viral marketing campaigns, Warner Brothers launched a campaign website for incumbent District Attorney Harvey Dent with a title taken from one of the best mystery-oriented comics I've ever read (The Long Hallowe'en), showcasing a poster of Aaron Eckhart (you may remember him from Thank You For Smoking) as the esteemed candidate.
Later in the week, another site popped up called I Believe In Harvey Dent Too, featuring a similar campaign poster, although marked up a bit. The webmaster challenged browsers to submit their email address (Some kinda pyramid scheme?), and one more pixel would be revealed of an image underneath.
Naturally, it only took about a day for the image to become clear, showing our man Ennis del Mar with the white makeup and a hideous scar across his mouth. Now, although the picture isn't really showing much at all, it really gives us an idea that we won't be seeing Chris Nolan's new Batman franchise delve into the land of rubber nipples and brain-ray stealing machines anytime soon. This keeps fanboy happy.
However, there has been a bit of skepticism about the picture since and the number of fake Joker pictures on the Internet has been about the same as the number of biological warfare scares in 2002.
Regardless of it's authenticity, whoever orchestrated the image reveal is a genius.
Since the release date is over a year off, I'm sure we'll be treated to a number of other surprise marketing-based revelations about the film. Word on the street is that a teaser trailer will premiere sometime this summer, perhaps attached to the latest adventures of everyone's favourite boy wizard (I think I'll just watch it on the tubes, thanks).
UPDATE: The Joker picture site is now been taken down, and replaced with textual laughter. They did leave a note, however, saying "See you in December."
2 comments:
Welp, this isn't the first I've heard of guerilla marketing for the Dark Knight.
Comingsoon.net, a delightful movie news website with some of the best coverage I've ever seen, posted this link: http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=5710.
Apparently a comic book store was covered in Joker's with the words "HAHAHAHAHA" written on them. Sure, NOW it's considered marketing but when I did it it was considered a felony offense.
Yeah, I saw the cards too, and I dig it.
This kinda reminds me of the Val Kilmer heads that were spotted across Toronto a few summers ago.
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