Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise exist in rarified air. They have resided at the top of the A-list for over 30 years. Their legacies in the film canon are firmly set. This summer, audiences get to see both of them on the big screen with Cruise’s MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING opening on May 23rd and Pitt’s F1 arriving five weeks later on June 27th.
These two films have a lot in common. Both are expensive action films. F1 reportedly has a budget of $300M, while MISSION is said to be approaching $400M. If true, these would be two of the most costliest movies ever made. And both MISSION and F1 are leaning into their lead actors to sell the movie. They’re doing so, however, in very different ways.
Both posters lock in on extreme close-ups of their lead actor. The big difference is that for MISSION, it is abundantly clear that we’re looking at Cruise. For F1, most of Pitt’s face is obscured by a helmet. It could, quite frankly, be anyone behind that head gear.
As we have said multiple times, movie posters may not be the most crucial asset in a film’s marketing campaign, but they’re not unimportant. Posters build both unaided and general awareness among moviegoers simply by hanging in theater hallways that millions of people walk past each week.
With people jostling other moviegoers while holding a bucket of popcorn and a soda, the poster on the left will leave more of an immediate impression than the one on the right.
Sure, it only takes a moment to learn that it’s Pitt with his name above the title, but with MISSION, that extra step isn’t necessary. And, speaking of titles, once you figure out that’s Pitt, you may not know what the film is, given the official Formula 1 font selected for the title. You’re out of luck if you’re not a F1 fan. In other words, Warner Bros. is making it much harder for moviegoers to latch on to the film by obscuring its legendary lead actor and making the title challenging to discern. With that in mind, it’s not surprising to see that F1 is struggling to build awareness.
Looking at the chart below, awareness for MISSION (light yellow) is twice as high as that for F1 (dark yellow). Yes, of course, MISSION, a franchise with eight films, has higher built-in awareness. It is not surprising that MISSION would be higher. However, with $300M to recoup and a trailer that dropped six months ago, we would expect awareness for F1 to be above 24%.
Perhaps of greater concern is the fact that F1 had only a minor bounce coming out of the Super Bowl. Not only did viewers get to see commercials for both films, but Cruise and Pitt prominently promoted these films in pre-taped interstitials. MISSION saw a big gain in unaided awareness coming out of the game, rising from 2% to 4%. F1 did not. Of the ten films that advertised during the Super Bowl (including the pre-game), F1 had the second lowest unaided awareness ahead of only THE AMATEUR.
That’s not to say that F1 didn’t see a lift. It did. Unaided awareness jumped from essentially zero to 0.5%. That’s a small gain, but a gain nonetheless. Having Pitt introducing the game no doubt helped. And that might be the key going forward. If there is any hope for F1 to be profitable, it will need Pitt front and center, which means retiring the teaser poster and making it easier for people to see that Pitt actually stars in this movie.
F1 is still 123 days away from release; the marketing campaign is in its infancy. But there’s not too much time. Audiences can sense when a studio commits to a movie. We often talk about eventizing a film – to make it feel big and important. A must see. One way to do that is to build long-lead anticipation. Warner Bros. is doing a masterful job of doing that for SUPERMAN, which has 62% awareness ahead of its July release.
We hope that F1 ends up being profitable, but for that to happen, awareness needs to start rising. And that might mean removing Pitt’s mask.
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