Is It Normal For A Diz Film To Have No Hype?

[beaker]

Just wondering if it's a normal thing for the big Holiday Disney tentpole to have not one single shred of promotional material, teaser trailer, teaser poster, etc eight months before release? Now I know eight months may seem like a lot, but Disney is known for releasing teaser trailers and posters two years in advance(such as the case with The Incredibles and Tron Legacy) Standard is at least a year.

It's late March, and this thing hits in eight months...yet nothing.
Yeah, I know...normally the big Thanksiving/holiday release film is 2d or 3d animated, meaning there's all kinds of teaser art and production studio stills...and I know the film just recently wrapped up shooting. But still.

Anyone else finding this a bit odd? Is there any indication when we'll get ANY sort of teaser trailer or poster, or anything indicating for the public that this film is coming out? Most parents and kids probably don't have a clue there's a new Muppet film coming out, or that Disney even owns the Muppets.

Also merchandise wise, nada in Disney stores so far.

 

[Drtooth]

I fault them for not filming a separate teaser before the movie started shooting (or during the beginning of production)... the film just wrapped a month ago, and they clearly need to edit the thing together before they can really make a trailer... but a teaser has nothing to do with the movie and usually happens at least a year in advance.

Now, with Pixar, things are different anyway. I'm guessing a lot of their teasers are actually test/promotional films anyway... but it takes them quite a while to work on one, so they'd have more footage to make and play with.

But other than that, there's a difference between being cautious and being cowardly. The problem with Muppet merchandise at Disney was that almost everything (except for the Pook-a-looz) was seasonal... school supplies, beach towels... the coffee mugs could have stayed a bit longer. The Pook dolls were unfortunate. They came out at an odd time and people aren't looking for massive collectible toy lines that far from Christmas. Had they stayed around a while longer, they would have done much better... and had the price point been just a bit lower, they would have really taken off.

But I don't see how a Kermit bean bag is going to derail things.

 

[frogboy4]

It's not time to worry yet. Animated films begin production years before they come out. This began production late last fall. Different animal, but it would have been nice to see a teaser.

Disney is releasing "African Cats" and "Prom" in April, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" in May, "Cars 2" in June and "Whinnie the Pooh" in July. I expect the trailers to kick off by "Cars 2", maybe earlier, but they'll definitely promote it with the Pooh reboot. Patience.

I'm thinking that Disney doesn't want this to get lost among the other garbage out there and wants a big solid push by early summer rather than a trickle now. And let's not forget the photo campaigns they had in EW last year! Great stuff. There is some initial hype. We'll get the rest soon enough.

 

[MelissaY1]

Yeah there really hasn't been any advanced promotion on this yet, has there? At my job we get all that kind of stuff in advance since we work with movie stills and imagery, and the only shots we've gotten from this film so far is the ones we've all seen with Walter and the gang at the table with Jason Segel.

 

[dwmckim]

The lack of a teaser trailer or any kind of promotion specifically for the movie doesn't bother me at this relatively early time.

What does heavily annoy me and question Disney's planning after i had been so won over previously is the fact that they appeared to have a multi-year plan in regards to building the momentum and getting the Muppets back in the public eye as a hot property. They had been building and building...and then like a speeding car crashing into a wall - NOTHING. Silence. Crickets.

I can give them a pass for not rolling out ads for the November movie yet. I can't excuse their completely dropping the Muppet (brand) ball.

 

[Drtooth]

But again, some small inconsequential merchandise can't hurt. I'm not saying wave of large expensive toys and plush and breakfast cereals (that one's an impossibility anyway)... a Kermit bean bag, a selection of shirts with more than just Animal on it, something. Some sort of recognition that they own them and a movie's coming out. Even prefab stuff that's available in other places like the Marvel toys they're starting to carry.

 

[BobThePizzaBoy]

I think we'll see a trailer by Cars 2. I think the fact that they didn't start filming till October is throwing things back a bit. But realize we didn't get to see anything from Bolt beyond one conceptual artwork piece until the trailer attached to WALL-E. We've seen some promotional photos at least. Granted, they aren't of scenes in the finished film but it seems to be going the same way the average Turkey Day Disney tentpole is going. I'm not too surprised.

 

[Drtooth]

The lack of a teaser trailer or any kind of promotion specifically for the movie doesn't bother me at this relatively early time.

What does heavily annoy me and question Disney's planning after i had been so won over previously is the fact that they appeared to have a multi-year plan in regards to building the momentum and getting the Muppets back in the public eye as a hot property. They had been building and building...and then like a speeding car crashing into a wall - NOTHING. Silence. Crickets.

No doubt a finished trailer won't happen for a while, and they'll also no doubt want to attach it to an actual movie people will actually see.

Disney is releasing "African Cats" and "Prom" in April, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" in May, "Cars 2" in June and "Whinnie the Pooh" in July. I expect the trailers to kick off by "Cars 2", maybe earlier, but they'll definitely promote it with the Pooh reboot. Patience.

Pirates and Cars seem like their best bets... I doubt anyone would be willing to see African Cats en masse, slighty more people with Prom (which will probably focus on advertising lame tween movies anyway). POTC is a franchise they milked for some time now (even though it seems to have disappeared until recently), and Cars? Well, Cars has been steadily run into the ground since the first movie 5 years ago. They haven't stopped making Cars merchandise.

HOWEVER, even with MFS, a teaser popped up a year or so in advance on a VHS... and the teaser was nothing... basically a title. Now, there was no way they'd get a teaser by Tangled (they just approved the script and started shooting around the time that film went out), but a short 1 minute "film" that hints that there's a movie coming should have been released with Tron 2. It didn't, I looked passed it. A Trailer won't happen until a GOOD Disney release comes out... which begs the question, studio aside, why wait for a Dis film to give out a trailer?

But other than that, there's NO marketing push, they revealed nothing we didn't know about at Toy Fair (even though lots of stuff apparently was unveiled and didn't happen last year), the comics stopped due to a move of Pixar properties to Marvel, no virals, no major updates on the website (except for a BUNCH of steps back)... they need to act fast, before the end of April, just for the small stuff (which should have happened by now... Kermit and Piggy valentines stuff would have been a hit... just sayin').

 

[CensoredAlso]

Perhaps they aren't anticipating a high demand. It's not like Disney or Henson has been giving the newer generations much reason to like the Muppets before. They put all their attention into new projects without giving the young audience any sense of the history. And then when they get no reaction at all from the audience, they figure they just need another new project.

 

[Drtooth]

If they weren't anticipating a high demand:

A) they wouldn't have bothered doing anything past the point of releasing stuff on DVD after Muppet OZ... no virals, no special, no comics... nothing. They would have just tossed it in the same pile they tossed the Saban shows unless they bothered selling the thing back to Henson

B) they wouldn't have bothered with the script , even after Segal badgered them to do so...

C) Above all, even if they did the movie, they'd toss it into a January, mid April, or even an August release and just get it over with... the Pre-Thanksgiving slot is ONLY reserved for movies they really want to take a risk with. Had Princess and the Frog got that slot instead of around Christmas it MAY have done something.