Those who attended last night’s press screening of F9 at the TCL Hollywood theater were gifted with the first public look at the teaser for Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World: Dominion. Yes, I saw the tease last night (yes, I drove there and back for the teaser, mostly because it’s been well over a year since I engaged in such nonsense), and it does the job. For those seeing F9 in IMAX theaters when it opens domestically in exactly ten days, you’ll get a two-part tease.
First, there’s a prehistoric prologue of sorts, offering something vaguely resembling an origin for the franchise’s star T-Rex. Despite concerns that the movie would get bogged down in “Unrequested Origin Story City,” the scene as it existed is no different than the “Sméagol finds the ring of power” prologue of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Or, even better example, it’s “dawn of time” setting and its “nature is a cruel beast” sensibilities reminded me of the “caveman discovers the black goo” prologue in The X-Files: Fight the Future.
Second, there’s a beat that takes place in present day. It acknowledges the “dinosaurs live among us” status quo of Fallen Kingdom and plays even better today than it might have in normal circumstances due to it A) being set in a location that has been frequented far more often in the last year B) serving as a metaphor for the movie industry as it exists today. Anyway, the most exciting part of the tease for the Trevorrow, Derek Connolly and Emily Carmichael-penned sequel was merely the text proclaiming that the film was coming “next summer.”
Even without the last year of blockbuster-free hell, this kind of long-lead tease for a preordained hit always hits in the right spot. Sure, there’s no reason to drown us in marketing material months and months and months before the release date, and there was a clear effort by the studios to pull back on that mentality even before Covid. Studios are realizing that the months and months selling these franchise films to the already converted, via pricey convention presentations, ridiculously long-lead magazine articles and the like, don’t do much for general moviegoers.
If you have a kick-ass SDCC presentation (often not meant too be seen by the general populace) a year in advance, well, you still have to spend the money when the film is much closer to opening weekend. And if you bomb at Comic-Con, well, then you’re on the defensive for no good reason. That terrific Marlon Brandon-narrated teaser for Superman Returns didn’t prevent the Bryan Singer film from disappointing a year later. The not-that-great teaser for The Dark Knight Rises (debuting a year out attached to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II) didn’t prevent the Chris Nolan trilogy capper from topping $1 billion global.
Conversely, Godzilla Vs. Kong (debuting today on EST after a $441 million-and-counting run) played to best-case-scenario box office even amid a pandemic and with concurrent streaming availability from a first trailer debuting just 65 days before its March 31 release date. Jordan Peele’s Us nabbed a $70 million domestic debut with a single Christmas Day trailer launched less than 90 days out from its late March opening day. You don’t need to drown us in pre-release marketing, but a fun tease like this, especially if followed by radio silence until Christmas is harmless fun.
I was (obviously) reminded of the year-out tease for The Dark Knight and the other Chris Nolan movies (like Tenet, attached so prints of Hobbs & Shaw in summer 2019) that followed suit. I am reminded of the Thanksgiving weekend teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a kind of “because the fans demanded it” 13-months-out preview that fortunately was followed by relative silence prior to April of 2015. And, yeah, in what may be the first example of this sort of thing, I remembering the roaring and applause that followed the year-out teaser for The Flintstones.
Opening night Jurassic Park audiences lost it when the bouncing ball flew off-screen and was caught by an in-costume John Goodman who then yelled out “Yabba-Dabba-Doo!” The movie wasn’t very good, but it was an early example of IP-specific marketing and the appeal of a well-liked actor playing a cast-to-type marquee character. Last night’s tease was a little different, as the “next summer… rule the Earth” text was a pronouncement that, yes, we’re still getting a summer movie season in 2022, and a reminder that the real text for the box office begins after this summer.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, the vast majority of “big” studio releases were pushed out of the summer, leaving a slew of coin-toss franchise plays (Jungle Cruise, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Snake Eyes), horror flicks (sequels to A Quiet Place, Conjuring, Don’t Breathe, Escape Room along with Candyman and M. Night Shyamalan’s Old) and two conventional 1600 lbs. gorillas in F9 and Black Widow. F9 has passed $270 million worldwide, including a decent $213 million from China, while Black Widow’s advance ticket sales are allegedly on par with previous solo MCU flicks.
But otherwise, the real game begins on Labor Day with Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, followed by Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Dune, No Time to Die and Halloween Kills. The year closes out with the likes of Eternals, Top Gun: Maverick, Sing 2, Matrix 4 and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Barring a fluke, I’d peg Sony and Marvel’s third MCU Spider-Man movie as the year’s biggest Hollywood release and maybe (emphasis on “maybe”) the first $1 billion grosser since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But next year will be when some sense of normalcy returns.
Next year offers two Universal mega-movies (Minions 2 and Jurassic World 3), three DC Films flicks (The Batman, Black Adam, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom), four MCU flicks (Thor 4, Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2 and The Marvels) and the likes of Mission: Impossible 7, John Wick: Chapter 3 and Indiana Jones 5. Pardon the baseball metaphor, but I could see the likes of Jurassic World: Dominion and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever getting the theatrical industry on base before James Cameron’s Avatar 2 just knocks it out of the park in December 2022 to bring the whole team home.
So, yes, barring a happy miracle, I wouldn’t expect much this year (especially outside of the Marvel/DC flicks, No Time to Die and F9) to earn even as much as Tenet ($363 million) or Godzilla Vs. Kong ($441 million). But next year is when we get movies that in normal times absolutely would have been commercial monsters, amid hopefully a mostly recovered North American and comparatively recovering overseas marketplace. That’s the promise of the Jurassic World: Dominion teaser. “Next summer,” there will be a real summer movie season. To quote In the Heights, it won’t be long now...
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June 16, 2021 at 05:00AM
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‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Preview Teases A Normal Summer Movie Season - Forbes
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