So it turns out that Hunger Games only spent forty million dollars on marketing. Personally, I
can’t imagine spending that much money on anything. I directed a short film once, and most of
the money I spent went toward craft services. It is projected that the film will do very well (north of $100mm), and
I can’t say that’s a surprise to me. Look at the trailers, guys. Unless the rest of the film is nothing
like what we get a glimpse of there I think we can all surmise we’re in for a joy ride. And of
all the people I’ve talked to about upcoming movies, I can’t think of one person who hasn’t
seen this trailer. Everyone knows about the movie, and some of my friends are even reading the
books in preparation for it. “Yeah, you know… I figured since the movie’s coming out”… “I just
picked the book up actually – a friend of mine told me I’d like it. Plus, the movie’s coming out,
you know.”

Yes, I do know. I also know that John Carter was originally a book. The book was written by
the same man who wrote Tarzan, and John Carter, in fact, was supposed to be one of Disney’s
first films. Interestingly enough, Disney chose to produce Tarzan first. If I was old enough to
truly appreciate the underlying themes of imperialism in the book, and if Tarzan wasn’t directed
toward kids, I’m sure I would have read the novel in preparation for the film the same way
everyone has been picking up The Hunger Games. But no one picked up John Carter of Mars in
preparation for Disney’s latest blockbuster. Hardly anyone even knew there was a book to pick
up! But more importantly, very few people went to go see the movie when it came out, and the
movie is what’s relevant now. Or, uh. Last week. So what does this have to do with The Hunger
Games?

John Carter not only spent 250 million dollars on production, they spent a hundred million on
marketing alone. That is sixty million more than what The Hunger Games spent on marketing.
Sixty million more! The Hunger Games didn’t even spend half John Carter’s marketing budget,
yet somehow they’ve done a better job of marketing their film. How? They made sure their
target audience saw their awesome trailer. Before John Carter came out there were billboards
and giant posters through out the city of Los Angeles, but I hadn’t seen a trailer for it myself
until I searched one up on Youtube. I asked my little sister back home if she’d heard of it, and she
was astonished that I hadn’t. “Every other commercial is a commercial for that movie, Nick, how
have you not seen one trailer?”

I’m in college and I don’t watch TV. Hell, I don’t even have TV, and most of my friends don’t
either. What I have is Netflix streaming, and Hulu – that’s TV for people my age. The internet.
Most of the marketing funds for The Hunger Games have gone into the internet. They put a lot
of money into making sure that sites like Youtube and Facebook had ads for their film, where as
most of those funds for John Carter went seemingly in all the wrong places. Today is the age of
digital advertisement, and while John Carter is said to be a bad movie, it may still have attracted
a larger audience had they done a better job of marketing with their 100 million dollars.

However, let it be known that the much smaller budget Lionsgate worked with proved to be all the more powerful.