G.I. Joe movie gets director

Stephen Sommers set to take the helm on GI JOE

I’m sorry, but the tapping of someone like Sommers says to me the studio has dictated how this movie will look, feel and everything else. At this point they were just looking for a patsy to fill the chair, someone who wouldn’t try to do anything original with the movie or try to make it into a “film.” They just need someone to call “action” and “cut” while the executive producer makes sure all the special effects shots are setup .

Quick Takes: Friends of MMM 8/13/07

• Karina announces she’ll be adding a weekly segment to the FilmCouch podcast from Spout. She said she’s taking questions that she’ll then try to answer in the podcast so I’m pretty much approaching this as “Stump Longworth.”
• C.C. Chapman says there’s a major disconnect between the Bridge to Terebithia’s marketing campaign and the movie itself. This is something I heard a lot about when the movie first came out but it’s nice to hear from someone who isn’t always talking movies.
• Todd gives a huge thumbs up to Stardust, saying it’s one of the best flicks of the year. This has more influence over my desire to see the movie than the campaign or any of the negative to middling reviews the movie got.
• Ian Schafer got quoted in the Wall Street Journal about video advertising and its usage.

Quick Takes 8/13/07

• Younger people are increasingly accessing their entertainment on computers and not traditional devices like TVs.
• National CineMedia says ad revenue was up 52.8 percent in the second quarter as more advertisers got into the pre-show ad network it runs.
• Studios get into a bidding war over an unpublished novel by an unknown author. They frenzy was the result of the book being about vampires and studios being desperate for anything they can turn into a movie, especially if it has franchise possibilities.
• Wizard World Chicago, outshone by the recent San Dieago Comic-Con, got a little movie marketing love in the shape of a preview of footage from next year’s The Dark Knight. Only fitting since so much of the movie was shot here in Chicago.

LOTD: 8/13/07

• Max Kalehoff is talking about how the Freakonomics blog has switched from full-text to partial feeds, a change that came about as the blog became hosted by The New York Times. I’m sure that’s coincidental and that it’s not because the NYTimes is trying to drive page views or anything. (CT)
• It’s more than a little amusing to me that the “Cavemen” show that was inspired by the Geico ad campaign is having trouble signing insurance-related advertisers. (CT)
• The bashing of marketing in Second Life continues with this piece in Wired. There are legitimate points in there but it’s kind of ridiculous how quickly the media’s conventional wisdom shifted from “You need to be there” to “Why would you ever be there.” Thankfully people like Neville Hobson are helping to add some perspective. (CT)
• Time Warner Cable’s new DVR restricts program playback to just the same day the show was broadcast and doesn’t allow you to fast-forward through commercials. It’s kind of amazing how they identified a user need and failed completely to meet that. (CT)
• Greg Howlett at MarketingPilgrim wonders if self-publishing is actually that great idea based on some of the stuff in his RSS reader. (CT)
• Jeremiah has a great analysis on the best uses for Facebook and what marketers need to know about the platform. (CT)

MMM on ATS

As my friend Joe Jaffe has announced, I’ll be joining him and Real Pie Media‘s Kirk Skodis on one of the next episodes of the Across the Sound podcast. Kirk and Joe recorded an episode that’s available for your listening pleasure now where they talk all about new marketing types of stuff. Since Kirk operates largely in the movie marketing space and since I’ve known both he and Jaffe for a while now they decided to extend an invite to me to come on and offer my opinions on movie marketing efforts. This should be fun as these are two guys I respect tremendously.