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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Bay Mad @ Transformers PR Campaign... or Not

According to an in-house communique Michael Bay sent Paramount Pictures last month, the director called the PR campaign for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen an "abject failure." He specifically mentioned the fact that the first one received a full half-hour at the MTV Movie Awards; Revenge of the Fallen's only coverage there was an award presentation by the stars (Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf). He also specifically mentioned the (lack of a) print campaign, calling it "really weak."

Michael Bay said he was waiting for the promotional campaign to hit full-swing, but it never happened. "Right now, we are not an event, we are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation," he wrote in the e-mail leaked to TMZ.

However, a more recent message was also released to the celebrity gossip site, in which Michael Bay praises Paramount for "busting [their] butts and bringing [their] 'A Game.'" A spokesperson for the company assured TMZ the more recent message, "clearly speaks to a differing stance than the former." (Now there's a guy with a career in politics just waiting on him.) Seriously, that was Paramount's statement. They added, "Transformers are robots."

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen opens this week.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009
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1 comment:

Manodogs said...

It turns out this whole thing may have been a promotional "stunt" itself, as Michael Bay is apparently the only one worried about Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen performing as well as the first one. If projections are anywhere near accurate, Transformers 2 will be the biggest movie, not only of the summer, but of the year! In fact, it is expected to set records (though "not Dark Knight numbers," said one analyst).

Some pointed-out that Revenge of the Fallen doesn't need the loud, in-your-face promotion the first Transformers received and, had it been handled that way, it would have turned a lot of people off.

Fans of the first flick already know it's coming and even though there was no big "push," pretty much every man, woman, and child in the Western world knows Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen comes out tomorrow.