Universal and Warner Brothers hope to whet appetites with extended previews

Posted on 8, 2004
Filed under New Releases, Online Marketing, Theatrical

Following Fox Searchlight's success with their extended preview for 28 Days Later last year, both Universal and Warner Brothers will be premiering lengthy previews of their own next week.

Universal will screen an uncut 10 minutes from the upcoming Dawn of the Dead as a special event on the USA Network (which is a division of Vivendi-Universal, mind you), which will air "sometime between 10 and 10:30 pm" on March 15th.

In me-too fashion, Warner Brothers will release the first 9 minutes of Taking Lives, although it will only be available online. The preview will premiere on the Taking Lives website on March 19th.

If these test cases work out well, we'll probably see additional budgeting for the creation of "prefaces" to films to be used as "special events," much like we see additional funds budgeted for DVD extras. So far, it looks like this marketing effort works best with horror and thriller titles, which by nature have provocative, spine-tingling sequences perfect for a few minutes of attention-getting advertising. Plus, horror titles are more resistant to bad reviews.