The Evolution of Entertainment Marketing: How Movies Win Audiences in the Digital Age

In 1998, Star Wars fans across North America bought tickets to Meet Joe Black, The Waterboy and The Siege. Many of them had no interest in those films. They had come for the two-minute trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and when it finished, a lot of them walked out¹.

Quick Summary

Film marketing has moved from posters and cinema trailers to national television, the internet, social media and brand partnerships. Jaws (1975) paired the widest release of its time with national TV ads and became the first film to top $100 million domestically². The Blair Witch Project (1999) spent $1.5 million on prerelease marketing and built its audience with a website and "missing" posters⁴. Today campaigns run on TikTok moments such as M3GAN's dance⁵⁴, brand partners worth hundreds of millions of dollars in promotion, as with Wicked⁸, exit polls like CinemaScore and PostTrak³⁵, data tools such as Netflix's personalized artwork⁵⁹, and localization for global markets, from Pixar's green peppers in Japan to release timing in China⁶⁸,⁷¹.

Movie marketing has always been about giving people a reason to show up. What changed over the last fifty years is where that reason comes from: first national television, then the early internet, then social media and fan communities that can make or break a campaign. The campaigns below are the ones that changed how studios sell films, with what is actually on record about each.

The Evolution of Entertainment Marketing in the Film Industry

For most of film history, a movie was sold with posters, newspaper ads and trailers in cinemas, and it opened in a few cities before spreading to the rest of the country.

From Print to Digital: The Transformation of Movie Promotion

Jaws changed that pattern in the summer of 1975. It had the widest distribution of its time and a national television advertising campaign, and it became the first film to top $100 million at the domestic box office². Summer had been a quiet season for films. After Jaws, the studios began moving their action and thriller films to wide summer releases, which created the summer movie season².

The internet arrived in movie marketing earlier than most people remember. In July 1993 Variety reported that studios had begun trying to reach moviegoers through the personal computer: subscribers to America Online could download a full-motion trailer for Columbia Pictures' In the Line of Fire, along with production notes and stills. As a lure, subscribers could also ask for free tickets to a local screening. AOL then had 30,000 subscribers, and in the service's first week and a half about 170 people had dialed in to download the material³.

Six years later a small distributor without the money for costly TV ads built a hit largely through a website, as the section on independent films below explains⁴. By 2021, according to the Motion Picture Association, digital streaming accounted for 72 percent of the combined theatrical and home entertainment market, up from 46 percent in 2019⁵.

The Rise of Transmedia Storytelling in Film Promotion

The most ambitious campaigns turned the audience into participants. For The Dark Knight, 42 Entertainment ran "Why So Serious?", an alternate reality game that played out over 15 months before the film's release and recruited fans as citizens of Gotham City⁶.

According to the agency's case study, more than 11 million unique participants in over 75 countries took part. Fans rallied as the Joker's henchmen, campaigned for Harvey Dent to be elected district attorney, called phone numbers written in the sky and followed GPS coordinates to find mobile phones baked inside birthday cakes⁶.

Later campaigns extended films into physical spaces. For Barbie, Warner Bros. worked with Airbnb on a Malibu mansion turned into a modern-day Malibu Dreamhouse, and Universal invited Wicked's brand partners to what it called a "Wicked fair," a visit to the London sets where they could walk through the Emerald City and Shiz University before signing on⁷,⁸.

How Theatrical Trailers Evolved into Cultural Events

Before trailers went online, the only way to see one was in a cinema. That is why, according to a New York Times report cited by CinemaBlend, fans paid for other films just to watch the first Phantom Menace trailer in 1998 and left once it had played¹.

Online, trailer launches became events measured in views. Disney said the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was viewed 112 million times in the 24 hours after it premiered at halftime of ESPN's Monday Night Football in October 2015⁹. Two years later, Marvel said the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War had 230 million views in its first 24 hours, passing the previous record of 197 million set by It. Before It, The Fate of the Furious had held the title with 139 million views¹⁰. In February 2024 Disney said the Super Bowl trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine had 365 million views in 24 hours, "the most viewed movie trailer of all time"¹¹.

Trailers have become a business of their own. The New York Times described "a cottage industry, with specialty trailer houses and an important movie metric in the number of downloads in the first 24 hours," and noted "tightly wound teasers targeted to different global markets and attention spans. Some are as short as three seconds on mobile devices"¹². The industry has its own awards: at the 2022 Golden Trailer Awards, Disney led the studios with 85 nominations, and the top trailer houses were AV Squad with AV Print, GrandSon and Tiny Hero¹³. Mark Woollen, whose company made acclaimed trailers for The Social Network and The Tree of Life, told Variety that his proudest moment was cutting the trailer for Schindler's List while at Universal¹⁴.

In 2011 his company's trailers for The Tree of Life, The Social Network, Catfish and Biutiful were all up for Golden Trailer Awards, and its work also included Black Swan, True Grit and Super 8¹⁴. Trailers compete for attention long after release: in 2018 the New York Times noted that trailers for Avengers: Infinity War held two of the top three spots for downloads, with more than 400 million combined, according to IMDb¹².

Placement matters as much as the cut. Warner Bros. attached a teaser for Barbie, set to music from 2001: A Space Odyssey in homage to Stanley Kubrick's film, to showings of Avatar: The Way of Water. "We did a very provocative teaser trailer and put it [before showings of] 'Avatar: The Way of Water' which is maybe not your first thought for a 'Barbie' movie," said Josh Goldstine, Warner Bros.' president of global marketing⁷.

Strategic Publicity and Media Relations in the Digital Age

A premiere can still be the story. Paramount premiered Top Gun: Maverick at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2022, after a tribute to Tom Cruise's career¹⁵. Eight fighter jets flew over the Palais trailing red and blue smoke to match the French flag, and the festival surprised Cruise with an honorary Palme d'Or¹⁶. Asked at the festival whether the film could have gone straight to streaming, Cruise said: "That's not going to happen. Ever." He added: "I make movies for the big screen"¹⁷.

The campaign paid off. Top Gun: Maverick opened to a Memorial Day record of $160.5 million over four days in the widest release ever at the time, 4,735 theaters, with an A+ CinemaScore¹⁸. Paramount had also shown the film first to theater owners at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, nearly a week before its world premiere in San Diego, which The Hollywood Reporter described as a way of thanking exhibitors for their patience¹⁹.

Publicity stunts can reach far beyond their cost. For the horror film Smile in 2022, Paramount placed people in the crowd at Major League Baseball games who smiled directly into broadcast cameras for the whole game²⁰. /Film reported smilers at a game between the Oakland A's and the New York Mets, at Yankees and Dodgers games, and in the background of NBC's The Today Show²¹. Smile opened to $22 million on a reported $17 million production budget²⁰.

It was the first opening above $20 million at the domestic box office since Sony's Bullet Train in early August, and the film took $36.5 million worldwide in its first weekend²⁰.

Stars' press tours remain central for the biggest releases. In June 2023 Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling announced an eight-city global tour for Barbie covering Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Sydney, Seoul, Mexico City, London and Berlin²².

Leveraging Fan Communities and Organic Buzz

Audiences can even force a studio to change the film itself. After the response to the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog in 2019, Paramount moved the film from November 8, 2019, to February 14, 2020²³,²⁴. Director Jeff Fowler tweeted, "Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right," and the character was redesigned with wider eyes and more exaggerated features. The new look appeared in a second trailer on November 12, 2019²⁴.

Fan conventions give studios a stage. Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige returned to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022 to unveil Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, three years after unveiling Phase 4 there²⁵, and at the 2024 Hall H panel Marvel announced that Robert Downey Jr. would play Doctor Doom²⁶.

The reveal was staged for the room: a group of figures in green cloaks and Doom masks took the stage before one stepped forward as Downey, and the Hall H crowd chanted "RDJ!" "New mask, same task," Downey said²⁶. The 2022 Phase 5 panel also included a trailer for She-Hulk that, unlike much of the footage shown in Hall H, was released publicly²⁵. When talent cannot appear, the stage empties: in 2023, with an actors' strike looming, Variety reported that Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Sony, Universal, HBO and Netflix were not planning panels, and that studios might lean on activations and stunts outside the convention center instead²⁷.

Sometimes fans start the campaign themselves. In 2022, young moviegoers began wearing suits to Minions: The Rise of Gru under the hashtag #GentleMinions, which had 5 million TikTok views within a week. Universal responded publicly: "To everyone showing up to 'Minions' in suits: we see you and we love you"²⁸.

The official Minions TikTok account, which endorsed the trend, had attracted 3 million followers in the 10 months since it launched, 1 million of them in a single week²⁹.

Merchandising and Brand Partnerships

Brand partners now carry much of the cost and reach of a big campaign. Barbie's partners ranged from a bright fuchsia Xbox to a $1,350 Balmain cropped hoodie, according to Variety⁷, and Burger King Brazil created a BK Barbie Combo with a bright pink sauce³⁰. Goldstine said some of the tie-ins were licensing deals with Mattel and others came from brands that "made their own decisions to be part of the color schema of the movie." He added: "It stopped becoming a marketing campaign and took on the quality of a movement"⁷.

The numbers are estimates. Variety reported that rival studio executives estimated Barbie's marketing cost at $150 million, which Goldstine would not confirm⁷. Deadline's later profit analysis put global prints and advertising at $175 million, offset by 165 promotional partnerships "from Crocs to Cold Stone ice cream"³¹.

Universal's campaign for Wicked in 2024 went further. It signed 450 promotional partners with a media value of $350 million, which Deadline called "the most ever for a Hollywood theatrical release," ahead of Spider-Man: No Way Home at $220 million and Avengers: Endgame at $200 million. Starbucks made Wicked its first-ever film partnership, with activations in 20,000 stores⁸. Media value is a studio valuation of the partners' promotion, not cash spent.

Deadline reported that the retail-focused partner campaign reached 2 billion shoppers and 25 billion impressions. Universal's chief marketing officer Michael Moses explained the scale: "This is IP, but there's not an existing film franchise, so we felt obligated to do everything to become an event." Wicked opened to $112.5 million in the United States and Canada, the best opening ever for a film based on a Broadway show⁸.

Deadpool & Wolverine used partners that fit the characters. The Hollywood Reporter said brand partnerships worth $135 million came on top of a Disney marketing spend of $100 million or more, "the going rate for a summer tentpole." Heinz, which rarely works with Hollywood, matched ketchup and mustard to Deadpool's red and Wolverine's yellow, and Ryan Reynolds' company Maximum Effort ran point on partnerships including Heineken and an Adidas shoe line³². Maximum Effort is both a production company and a digital marketing agency³³.

"I think what's fun about the Deadpool brand is that we're not ashamed of marketing," said George Dewey, Maximum Effort's co-founder. He said the partnerships came from "all over the place": Disney had existing relationships with brands such as Heineken, Maximum Effort had its own relationship with Jack in the Box, and the agency pursued others, like Heinz, because it loved the creative idea³³.

Reynolds said the harder task was keeping the campaign broad: "To me, the biggest challenge was avoiding the more R-rated marketing instincts of Deadpool." He said the marketing "was meant to feel all-audience audience as opposed to leaning into a specific comedy, action or superhero genre"³².

Even concession merchandise can become marketing. AMC's sandworm-shaped popcorn bucket for Dune: Part Two in 2024 drew millions of TikTok views, a Saturday Night Live sketch and jokes from Jimmy Kimmel³⁴.

Measuring and Analyzing Marketing Effectiveness

Studios measure a campaign before, during and after opening. CinemaScore, founded by Ed Mintz in 1978, polls audiences on opening night and gives films a letter grade. "It all started in 1978," Mintz told Deadline. The detailed results go to studios so they can see how a film performed and adjust the marketing, and a poor grade can signal a quick collapse: "A movie with a C+ CinemaScore, generally speaking, tends to collapse pretty quickly," said Harold Mintz, who projects final box office numbers for the company's studio clients³⁵.

The method is simple. As of 2014, CinemaScore had 35 to 45 pollster teams in 25 cities, aimed for 400 to 600 ballots per film, and polled only films opening on 1,500 screens or more³⁵.

PostTrak, run by Comscore with Screen Engine/ASI, combines audience demographics with survey questions about what drove people to a film and whether they would recommend it³⁶. It can attribute a campaign's pieces: for Smile, moviegoers named social media personality endorsements (17 percent), the in-theater trailer (15 percent) and the YouTube trailer (14 percent) as the most effective marketing²⁰. For Top Gun: Maverick, PostTrak gave the film 5 out of 5 stars, with 96 percent positive and 84 percent definite recommend¹⁸.

Streaming brought new public metrics. In November 2021 Netflix launched a public Top 10 website ranking series and films by hours viewed, a departure from its earlier practice of occasionally announcing how many accounts had watched at least two minutes³⁷.

Understanding the Modern Movie Marketing Landscape

A modern campaign runs across paid media, earned media and partners at the same time. Goldstine described the Barbie campaign in those terms: "In every campaign, there are elements of earned media [like social media buzz] and paid media [such as a trailer spot]"⁷.

The Shift from Traditional to Digital Marketing Channels

Hand-painted billboards like the one above were once a standard way to sell a film. Today most campaigns mix traditional and digital channels. For Smile, Deadline reported that Paramount "leaned in heavily with the digital spend," aired TV spots during sporting events and ran trailers in theaters before films such as Bullet Train and The Black Phone²⁰. Before its opening weekend, the analytics firm RelishMix counted 42 million TikTok views and 39 million YouTube views, and a "social media universe" of 110.2 million across platforms²⁰.

The market itself moved online. The MPA's 2021 report counted 1.3 billion streaming subscriptions worldwide, up 14 percent in a year, while the global box office was $21.3 billion, up 81 percent on 2020 but still well below pre-pandemic levels⁵.

Key Players in Movie Marketing Ecosystems

Studio marketing departments lead the campaigns. Josh Goldstine ran Barbie's campaign as Warner Bros.' president of global marketing⁷, and at Disney, Asad Ayaz, the company's chief brand officer and president of marketing for the film studio and Disney+, led the campaign for Deadpool & Wolverine³². Talent increasingly runs its own marketing too, as with Reynolds' Maximum Effort³³.

Specialist companies do much of the work. Trailer houses compete for Golden Trailer Awards¹³, and the Clio Entertainment Awards, which began in 1971 as a movie poster competition held at the Los Angeles home of Tichi Wilkerson, then publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, now have more than 100 categories³⁸. Research firms track awareness and test audiences, as the data section below explains³⁹.

The Clio Entertainment Awards grew from that first poster contest, won in 1971 by the one-sheet for Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. The awards' organizers describe the people behind film, television and gaming marketing as the "unsung heroes" of Hollywood³⁸.

Theater owners are a marketing audience as well. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, studios present their slates to exhibitors¹⁹, and they also use it to launch public trailers: Warner Bros. screened the first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux there in April 2024 and released it online shortly afterward⁴⁰. The exhibitors have their own agenda. At CinemaCon 2022, John Fithian, head of the National Association of Theatre Owners, declared: "I am pleased to announce that simultaneous release is dead as a serious business model, and piracy is what killed it"⁴¹.

Strategic Marketing Approaches for Blockbusters vs. Independent Films

Big studio films and small independent films start from very different budgets, but some of the most influential campaigns of the last 25 years came from films that had little money to spend.

Big-Budget Marketing Campaigns: Case Studies

Deadpool was a studio superhero film with a modest budget. Fox made it for $58 million, small by Marvel standards, and its R rating ruled out much of the usual family-friendly promotion⁴². Fortune reported that test footage leaked online had stirred up enough fan interest to help get the film greenlit⁴³.

The marketing sold the character more than the plot. It began in March 2015 with an image of Deadpool lying on a bearskin rug. It went on to an April Fools' Day interview on "Extra" in which Deadpool confirmed the R rating, a "12 Days of Deadpool" countdown to Christmas, a parody public service announcement about testicular cancer, a Tinder account, tweets during the premiere of ABC's "The Bachelor," and a three-hour takeover of MTV, VH1 and Spike before the opening weekend⁴². "The digital team was able to create a lot of content that wasn't movie-based, but Deadpool-based," said Marc Weinstock, Fox's president of domestic marketing⁴².

Fox had predicted an opening weekend of about $70 million⁴².

The R rating shaped the plan. "With R-rated fare, gone are the usual Disney/Marvel avenues of outreach," Gary Faber of the research firm Entertainment Research & Marketing told Ad Age, noting that Marvel films are usually advertised to all four audience quadrants, from children's TV to adult TV, and that an R rating restricts that⁴². Deadpool took $135 million in North America over its opening weekend, the first R-rated film to pass $100 million in an opening weekend, according to Fortune⁴³, and went on to gross $782.8 million worldwide⁴⁴.

Fortune drew a lesson for the industry: studios had long avoided R ratings on big-budget blockbusters on the theory that the rating would hurt ticket sales, and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy had deliberately stayed on the PG-13 side of the line. Deadpool showed that an R rating could work when fans saw it as proof that a film was true to its source⁴³.

Eight years later the sequel had the budget of a tentpole. Reynolds said the aim for Deadpool & Wolverine was broad: "It is unusual for an R-rated film, but we were always aiming for four-quadrant coverage"³². By August 18, 2024, it had earned $1.086 billion worldwide³².

Barbie showed how a campaign can outrun forecasts. Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.' president of domestic distribution, said: "We thought it would be $75 million for the opening weekend. Nobody saw $155 million coming." Released on the same weekend as Oppenheimer, Barbie helped drive what Variety called the fourth-biggest box office weekend in history⁴⁵.

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Independent Films

The Blair Witch Project was made for $60,000 and presented as real footage found after three young filmmakers vanished in the Maryland woods. At the 1999 Sundance Film Festival its unknown cast were listed as "missing" or "deceased." Artisan Entertainment bought the distribution rights for $1.1 million⁴.

Without the money for major television campaigns, Artisan launched a website two months before release that expanded the mythology with fictional police reports, newspaper articles and interviews. Within weeks it was getting 3 million hits a day. Interns went to cafes and dance clubs with realistic "missing" posters for the three actors⁴. "There are a lot of other ways to get to people other than throwing money at them," Artisan's head of marketing, John Hegeman, told the Los Angeles Times in 1999; the film's total prerelease marketing spend was $1.5 million⁴. It opened in 27 theaters with $56,000 per screen⁴ and grossed $248.6 million worldwide⁴⁶.

Hegeman had set up the first promotional movie website, for Stargate in 1994, and saw that the internet could reach a wider audience than a traditional $25 million campaign at a fraction of the cost⁴. Jim Fredrick, then senior vice president of creative advertising at Warner Bros., remembered the reaction across Hollywood: "I can't remember a horror movie I worked on after 1999 where the producer didn't say, 'Can't you do for me what they did for "Blair Witch"?'" He added that such a campaign could not easily be repeated because "The public has gotten very smart and they're very hard to trick"⁴.

Ten years later, Paramount used fans to decide where a small horror film would play. Paranormal Activity opened with late-night screenings in 12 college towns, and virtually all of them sold out⁴⁷. Its website had a "demand it" feature where fans could request the film in their city, and Paramount used those requests as one factor in choosing new markets⁴⁷. After sell-outs in 33 cities, the studio expanded the film to more than 40 markets. "The fans have spoken, and we are listening," Paramount's Rob Moore said⁴⁸. Paramount then promised to release the film nationwide once fans had logged one million demands on Eventful⁴⁹. Paranormal Activity grossed $193.4 million worldwide⁵⁰.

Paranormal Activity had been bought by DreamWorks with the idea of remaking it with famous actors, but Steven Spielberg and his partners decided it should be released as it was, and Paramount built the word-of-mouth campaign around it, USA Today reported⁵¹.

Smaller studio films still use the same tricks. Smile cost a reported $17 million and was sold partly with a stunt that placed smiling people in camera view at baseball games²⁰. Sony's romantic comedy Anyone But You, made for $25 million, became a $200 million-plus global hit with the help of social media, as the next section describes⁵².

Social Media's Impact on Movie Promotion

Social media gave studios a direct line to audiences, and gave audiences a direct line back.

Reach and Targeting

Studios now plan campaigns market by market online. For Anyone But You, Sony partnered with Gen-Z influencers in every market, who pushed the trailer and created their own content, including "Get Ready with Me" videos on TikTok and Instagram Reels⁵². Targeting also reaches traditional TV: in 2018 Viacom and the cinema loyalty data company Movio announced a partnership that connected Movio's moviegoer data to set-top box viewing data, so studios could reach likely moviegoers on Viacom's channels⁵³.

"The ability for studio advertisers to identify and reach persuadable audiences in our premium content environment is a distinctively powerful tool to drive strong box office results," said Bryson Gordon, Viacom's executive vice president of advanced advertising⁵³. The claims of precision are the companies' own.

Anyone But You also shows how release timing and targeting work together. Sony chose not to rush the film into Christmas release in most markets so its international marketing team, led by Stephen Basil-Jones, had time to build it, and the film played broadly beyond the English-speaking markets where Hollywood comedies usually do best⁵².

Engagement and Virality

After Deadpool's opening, Fox's marketing chief pointed to social media. "This reaffirmed my faith in social media," Marc Weinstock told Ad Age. "There's a lot of debate as to whether or not social media can really open a movie…and this proves it can"⁴².

M3GAN showed how a single moment can carry a campaign. Universal spotted that the killer doll's sway dance in the trailer would catch on, particularly on TikTok, and the hashtags #M3GAN, #M3GANMovie and #M3GANDance reached 1.3 billion views. The studio sent a troupe of M3GAN dancers to the premiere and on a tour that included the Empire State Building, subways and late-night talk shows, and the film opened to $30.2 million against projections of $17 million to $20 million⁵⁴.

Before the opening, RelishMix measured a "social media universe" of 1.5 billion for M3GAN across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, far above earlier horror comparisons such as Scream at 126.2 million⁵⁴. Its star Allison Williams said the dance nearly stayed out of the trailer: "And boy, the forces of marketing at Universal were right to keep it in the trailer, because it just helped, honestly"⁵⁵.

Leveraging Influencer Partnerships

Influencers are now part of most campaigns. For Smile, moviegoers polled by PostTrak named social media personality endorsements as the most effective piece of marketing, ahead of the trailers²⁰. Deadpool & Wolverine held a screening for dogs hosted by Peggy, the dog who played Dogpool, attended by more than 20 of the top canine influencers on social media³².

For Anyone But You, the influencer work fed a wider trend. Deadline reported 2.8 billion views of the hashtag #AnyoneButYou on TikTok, and Natasha Bedingfield's 20-year-old song "Unwritten" became an anthem for fans, rising to No. 7 on TikTok's viral chart after the film's release⁵².

Viral Campaigns That Transformed Box Office Results

#GentleMinions measurably changed an audience. According to PostTrak, 34 percent of the opening weekend audience for Minions: The Rise of Gru was aged 13 to 17, compared with 8 percent for Despicable Me 3, and the Minions TikTok account gained 1 million followers in a week²⁹. The trend had a head start in Australia, where a Sydney teenager's early TikTok video drew more than 8.5 million views and the film opened on June 23, before other territories²⁸.

"Barbenheimer" turned a scheduling clash into an event. Ten days before release, AMC said more than 20,000 of its members had booked Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day. "That more than 20,000 moviegoers have already made plans and purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day is a great sign that the growing online conversation around seeing both of these incredible films is turning into ticket sales," said AMC's Elizabeth Frank⁵⁶. Oppenheimer opened to $80.5 million that weekend alongside Barbie⁴⁵.

Online attention does not always sell tickets. After weeks of ironic "It's Morbin' time" memes, Sony returned Morbius to more than 1,000 theaters in June 2022⁵⁷, and Euronews described it as a film that "flopped, and was brought back from the dead only to flop again"⁵⁸.

IGN noted that the return followed weeks in which "It's Morbin' time" trended on Twitter for an entire week⁵⁷. Attention measured in memes was not the same as intent to buy a ticket.

Data-Driven Marketing Strategies in Film

Studios and streamers use data to decide what to make, whom to target and what to show them.

Analytics and Audience Targeting

Netflix personalizes the artwork each member sees for a title. Its technology blog gave an example: someone who watches many romantic films may be drawn to Good Will Hunting by artwork with Matt Damon and Minnie Driver, while a comedy fan may be drawn by artwork showing Robin Williams⁵⁹.

Netflix first used multi-armed bandit algorithms to find the single best artwork for a title, the one that earned the most plays from the largest share of members, then moved to choosing artwork for each member to highlight the aspects of a title most relevant to them⁵⁹.

Legendary Entertainment built an in-house data unit, Applied Analytics, whose research drove greenlight, casting and marketing decisions. Its head, Matthew Marolda, derided old movie marketing as "spray and pray" and said it "was broken badly" before the unit was formed. Data did not guarantee success: the unit found Matt Damon "over-indexed in search" in China, which led to his casting in The Great Wall, a co-production that grossed only $45.1 million in the United States⁶⁰.

Marolda said in 2016 that Applied Analytics employed about 60 people, "or, as I like to say, 59 more than anyone else in Hollywood," and the unit had begun working with outside companies, including Sony and Procter & Gamble⁶⁰.

20th Century Fox and Google's Advanced Solutions Lab built a computer vision tool called Merlin Video that analyzes trailers to predict their future audience. Fox's data science team wrote that trailers "remain the single most central element of a movie's entire marketing campaign," and that for Logan the model found the top audiences combined superhero fans with fans of the "rugged male action lead," which the team had not known with certainty⁶¹.

Predicting Box Office Success Through Marketing Metrics

Tracking polls have shaped release decisions for decades. The National Research Group, founded in 1978, signed the major studios to exclusive contracts for its telephone tracking polls, which asked likely moviegoers whether they were aware of a film and how likely they were to see it⁶².

Tracking also helps studios avoid each other. Slate's Edward Jay Epstein described how, in 2005, NRG polls showed War of the Worlds leading in all audience quadrants for the Fourth of July weekend. Warner Bros. opened Batman Begins in mid-June instead, 20th Century Fox moved Fantastic Four to the weekend after July 4, and all three films won their opening weekends⁶². By 2015, when Stagwell bought it, NRG was conducting more than one million tracking interviews a year across the 13 largest movie markets, as well as screenings, focus groups, exit surveys and trailer testing³⁹. Screen Engine/ASI's Kevin Goetz has written that test screenings shaped the final cuts of films including Fatal Attraction, Thelma & Louise and Cocktail⁶³.

Search data became another predictor. In 2013 Google said that four weeks before release, search volume for a film's trailer, combined with factors such as franchise status and seasonality, could predict opening weekend box office with 94 percent accuracy, a figure from the company itself⁶⁴.

One week out, Google said, search volume for a film's title combined with data such as theater counts gave a prediction that was 92 percent accurate⁶⁴.

Artificial intelligence followed. In January 2020 The Hollywood Reporter reported that Warner Bros. had signed with Cinelytic to use its predictive analytics at the greenlight stage, including estimating a star's value in any territory⁶⁵. Deadline described the same deal more narrowly, as a trial run for Warner Bros. International focused on distribution data⁶⁶.

Cinelytic had been founded four years earlier by Tobias Queisser and had spent three years building and testing its platform⁶⁵.

Exit polls then predict how long a film will last. Deadline explained in 2014 that exit polling, whether CinemaScore or PostTrak, can predict the multiple a film can expect from its opening weekend³⁵.

International Marketing Considerations for Global Releases

A global release means marketing to audiences with different languages, tastes, release dates and rules.

Global Appeal and Local Context

Hollywood no longer has the global box office to itself. In February 2025 the Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 became the highest-grossing animated film of all time, passing Inside Out 2's $1.699 billion with $1.7 billion from its home market alone, and the first non-Hollywood film to join the billion-dollar club⁶⁷.

Localization Strategies

Pixar re-animated parts of Inside Out for Japan. "We learned that some of our content wouldn't make sense in other countries. For example, in Japan, broccoli is not considered gross. Kids love it. So we asked them, 'What's gross to you?' They said green bell peppers, so we remodeled and reanimated three separate scenes replacing our broccoli with green peppers," director Pete Docter said. In all, Pixar localized 28 graphics across 45 shots, and for some audiences Riley's father daydreams about soccer instead of hockey⁶⁸.

Disney's Zootopia changed its news anchor by country: a moose in the United States, Canada and France, voiced by the Canadian anchor Peter Mansbridge, a tanuki in Japan, a panda in China, a koala voiced by the singer David Campbell in Australia and New Zealand, and a jaguar voiced by the journalist Ricardo Boechat in Brazil, among others⁶⁹.

For Frozen, which had taken more than $750 million internationally by early 2014, Disney released a video of "Let It Go" sung in 25 language versions⁷⁰.

Regional Release Strategies

Release dates are part of the marketing. Chinese authorities set Avengers: Endgame to open in China on April 24, 2019, two days before its U.S. release; Avengers: Infinity War had opened in China two weeks after the United States and still took $199.3 million there in its first weekend⁷¹.

China mattered: of Infinity War's $1.37 billion overseas total, $360 million came from China⁷¹.

Some films wait for the right moment in a market. Oppenheimer opened in Japan on March 29, 2024, through the local distributor Bitters End, which said: "The decision was made following months of thoughtful dialogue associated with the subject matter and acknowledging the particular sensitivity for us Japanese"⁷².

Navigating Regulatory Challenges

China limits foreign films. In February 2012 the White House announced that China had agreed to significantly increase market access for U.S. films after a World Trade Organization ruling⁷³. The Hollywood Reporter later summarized the deal as allowing 34 revenue-sharing imports a year, up from 20, and raising U.S. distributors' share of box office revenue from 11 to 15 percent to 25 percent⁷⁴.

The 2012 agreement also allowed more American 3D and IMAX films into China on favorable terms and opened more distribution through private companies instead of the state film monopoly⁷³. The Hollywood Reporter expected Hollywood to push in later talks for a larger quota, a bigger revenue share and more control over release dates in China⁷⁴.

Political sensitivities can overwhelm a campaign. Disney's live-action Mulan opened to $23 million in China in September 2020, and Variety reported that Chinese authorities had imposed a media blackout on coverage of the film amid criticism outside China of its ties to the Xinjiang region⁷⁵. In 2022, Deadline, citing Fortune, reported that the Taiwanese and Japanese flag patches on Maverick's jacket, missing from the first Top Gun: Maverick trailer in 2019, appeared restored in later trailers⁷⁶.

Cultural Sensitivity and Representation

A studio's social media speaks to every country at once. In 2023 the U.S. Barbie account replied to fan art showing Barbie on Oppenheimer's shoulders in front of an atomic mushroom cloud with "It's going to be a summer to remember," and Warner Bros. Japan publicly criticized its American headquarters. Warner Bros. apologized: "Warner Brothers regrets its recent insensitive social media engagement. The studio offers a sincere apology." The hashtag #NoBarbenheimer trended in Japan⁷⁷.

Twitter added a community note to the Barbie account's reply explaining the historical context of the mushroom cloud image, and Variety noted that as many as 250,000 people were killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, by some estimates⁷⁷. When Oppenheimer finally reached Japan, its distributor cited "months of thoughtful dialogue"⁷².

Measuring International Marketing Effectiveness

Research tools followed films abroad. In 2018 Comscore expanded PostTrak to Australia, Germany, Mexico and the UK. "More than ever, international theatrical box office performance is a critical input to industry planning," said Screen Engine/ASI's Kevin Goetz³⁶.

The Future of Entertainment Marketing for the Movie Industry

By early 2025, the changes reshaping film marketing were streaming, short-form video, data and artificial intelligence, and pressure to reduce the industry's environmental impact.

AI-Powered Personalization

Personalization is already in use: Netflix chooses artwork for each member⁵⁹, and studios have tested AI to value stars and forecast revenue⁶⁵. Generative AI in advertising has proved more contentious. In April 2024 A24 released AI-generated posters for Civil War showing scenes that are not in the film, which drew backlash and included geographic errors, such as placing Chicago's two Marina Towers buildings on opposite sides of the river⁷⁸.

The Hollywood Reporter noted that the images made the $50 million film look far more expensive, and that some viewers wondered whether the campaign gave "a false expectation of what they'll see in the film"⁷⁸.

Short-Form Videos and Social Media

Short video is now where many campaigns break out: M3GAN's dance, #GentleMinions and Anyone But You all built momentum on TikTok⁵⁴,²⁹,⁵². Trailers themselves are cut for shorter attention spans, some as short as three seconds on mobile¹².

Interactive and Immersive Experiences

Campaigns increasingly give fans something to do or visit, from Why So Serious?'s city-wide clue hunts⁶ to Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse and M3GAN's dancers performing in public⁷,⁵⁴.

Streaming Platform Integration

The pandemic forced experiments with release windows. Disney put Mulan on Disney+ Premier Access for $29.99 in the United States from September 4, 2020, and CEO Bob Chapek called it "a one-off as opposed trying to say that there's a new business windowing model"⁷⁹. In December 2020 Warner Bros. announced that its entire 2021 slate of 17 films, including Dune, would debut on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said: "Our content is extremely valuable, unless it's sitting on a shelf not being seen by anyone"⁸⁰.

WarnerMedia chair and CEO Ann Sarnoff called it a "unique one-year plan," and executives said it was not expected to continue beyond 2021⁸⁰.

Day-and-date release did not end with the pandemic. Universal and Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's opened to $80 million in October 2023 while streaming on Peacock the same day, the biggest opening for the service, even though 23 percent of the moviegoers who saw it already had Peacock⁸¹.

Deadline described the day-and-date release as an experiment by Universal to push Peacock's paid subscribers beyond 28 million⁸¹. Other Blumhouse films kept exclusive theatrical windows, including M3GAN⁵⁴.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Data now informs decisions from casting to trailer strategy, as Legendary's Applied Analytics unit and Fox's Merlin Video show⁶⁰,⁶¹. The Great Wall is a reminder that search data can point in the wrong direction⁶⁰.

Community Building and Fan Engagement

Studios increasingly respond to fan communities in public, as Universal did with #GentleMinions²⁸ and Paramount did with the Sonic redesign²⁴. Fan events such as Hall H remain a stage for announcements when talent is available²⁶,²⁷.

Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Sustainability is moving into the production and release process. In March 2023 Universal Filmed Entertainment Group launched GreenerLight, under which every greenlit film includes a sustainability plan covering development, production and distribution⁸². Disney said the production of The Call of the Wild diverted more than 82 percent of its waste from landfill⁸³.

The crew reduced waste, recycled used materials, prioritized responsible food service and used renewable energy⁸³. In the UK, the BAFTA albert consortium certifies productions with one to three stars; the BBC said that since certification began in 2014, it had been given to hundreds of programmes broadcast on the BBC, Sky, ITV and S4C⁸⁴.

Conclusion

Reach once came from money. Jaws showed what a wide release and national television could do, and the summer blockbuster followed².

Mystery can travel further than advertising. The Blair Witch Project spent $1.5 million on prerelease marketing and built an audience with a website and "missing" posters⁴.

Let the audience take part. "Why So Serious?" and Paranormal Activity's "demand it" campaign both gave fans something to do, from hunting clues to choosing where a film would open⁶,⁴⁷.

Sell the character. Deadpool's campaign created content around the character's personality and outperformed the studio's own opening forecast⁴².

Partners multiply reach. Barbie, Wicked and Deadpool & Wolverine all used hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of brand promotion alongside studio spending³¹,⁸,³².

Know each market. Pixar's green peppers, Oppenheimer's delayed release in Japan and the Barbenheimer apology show that a global campaign has to be local too⁶⁸,⁷²,⁷⁷.

Listen when the audience answers. Sonic the Hedgehog delayed its release and redesigned its star after fans reacted to the first trailer, and online buzz for Morbius showed that memes alone do not fill seats²⁴,⁵⁸.