James Dean Festival a Marketing Flop for Warner Brothers

Originally anticipating up to 100,000 visitors per day, the James Dean Festival should have been a coup for the Warner Brothers marketing team. The reality is a much bleaker picture: preliminary attendance figures show only 6,000 showing up over three days. This poor attendance, combined with losses stemming from damages incurred during severe weather, have cost Warner Brothers a good sum for what was probably the most expensive DVD release party on record:

Warner Bros. Studios lost an estimated $75,000 on the festival, said Brian Jamieson, the studio's vice president of worldwide marketing and international projects.

He said Rocco Productions, which the studio hired to promote and produce the three-day festival, lost at least $1 million - and possibly as much as $1.3 million - on the festival.

Warner Bros. paid to bring in a 100-foot-wide movie screen and high-tech digital projection equipment to show Dean's three motion pictures, Jamieson said.

That $75,000 figure is probably way off. It's hard to tell from the article, but our guess is that Warner Bros. may have some sort of contractual obligation to share in Rocco Production's losses, making this one costly promotional event if that's the case.


[Via the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]