Keeping Up the Hype
October 10th, 2011Let’s say you’re coming off what could’ve been one of the biggest box-office releases of the last decade, you’ve just created what’s sure to be a pop culture icon for years to come, and now you’re thinking how am I going to top this? Well if any of thats true you’d probably be Chitopher Nolan about a month after the release of The Dark Knight, the second installment in Hollywoods latest re-vamped Batman movies. Plans have already been laid for a third film but how could it surpass the last? All the conditions were perfect for a classic, excellent writing, low expectations as a result of the first installment in the series, and the tragic death of Heath Ledger making The Joker the final character he’d ever portray. Batman 3 seemed like a daunting task. Now I’m not here to make predictions about the quality of the film but I am here to write about how Christopher and his PR team have definitely started off on the right foot with hyping up The Dark Knight Rises.
Early in the Summer Warner Bros. launched the official Dark Knight Rises website which originally consisted of (much the public’s confusion) a blank webpage and an audio file of people shouting. You couldn’t help but think “Why isn’t my internet working? What do I have to download to see this webpage?”, and right there it’s evident just how brilliant this ad campaign was. You were thinking and you were intrigued. Where’d you go from there? A quick Google search would take you to the movies twitter and then eventually a massive collage image of the new villain Bain. You put in the time and effort (little as it was) and this felt like you’d just stumbled across something big. Discreet is exciting, I know I told my friends.