Buzz
In an era where the Internet often spoils every detail of upcoming movies—even their endings—it’s remarkable that certain filmmakers have successfully kept their projects under wraps until the very last moment. Some blurred reality with fiction, others leveraged the Internet’s reach, and a few campaigns were so captivating that they outshone the movies themselves.
1. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)
The found-footage horror genre was revolutionized by The Blair Witch Project, which chronicled the disappearance of three filmmakers in Maryland’s Black Hills. Nearly 80 million visitors explored "police reports" and other details on www.blairwitch.com. Combined with unknown actors and a faux documentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, the campaign convinced many that the film was rooted in real events.
2. A.I. (2001)
The production of A.I., a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick, was strictly closed to the press, with actors bound by confidentiality agreements. While the Spielberg-Kubrick partnership alone generated significant buzz, Warner Bros. amplified it by launching over 40 websites to immerse audiences in the film’s futuristic world, set in 2142 amidst a robot rebellion. Initially intended to support a Microsoft video game series titled The Beast, the campaign evolved into a 12-week alternate reality game (ARG). This expansive effort, leveraging phone lines, fax machines, emails, and live events, even outdid the marketing scale of The Blair Witch.
3. CLOVERFIELD
(2008)
The debut trailer for Cloverfield, shown before Transformers (2007), featured actual movie clips, including chaotic handheld footage of New York City’s destruction, and credited J.J. Abrams as producer—but omitted the film’s title. This omission sparked rumors of a Voltron adaptation or a Lost movie. Websites for the fictional brands Slusho and Tagruato were created, both tied to the origins of The Parasite, the film’s monster. A MySpace page for the protagonist Rob added to the intrigue, with posts claiming he was relocating to Japan for a job at Slusho.
4. DISTRICT 9 (2009)
District 9 depicts a world where ailing aliens land in Johannesburg in 1982 and are confined to a government camp. Over a year before the film’s release, billboards and signs declaring "Humans Only" appeared, without revealing the movie’s title. A website "authored" by the alien Christopher Johnson exposed the abuses by the military corporation Multinational United, while the company itself maintained its own online presence.
5. I'M STILL HERE (2010)
Director Casey Affleck revealed to The New York Times a week after the film’s release that I'm Still Here was a mockumentary, with Joaquin Phoenix faking his retirement from acting to pursue a rap career. The ruse was bolstered by Phoenix’s cringe-worthy 2009 appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.
Affleck insisted he "never meant to deceive anyone," and Phoenix later returned to Late Show as himself to apologize to Letterman.
6. INCEPTION (2010)
Christopher Nolan kept the plot of Inception under wraps until seven months before its premiere. The film’s official website featured only a spinning top controlled by the user’s mouse, which eventually wobbled and fell, redirecting visitors to a new site showcasing the first teaser poster. A viral game, Mind Crime, was also launched, hiding a movie trailer within its virtual theater.
7. SUPER 8 (2011)
The collaboration between J.J. Abrams (writer/director) and Steven Spielberg (producer) led to a predictably enigmatic marketing campaign. Theater staff required a special code to access the trailer canisters. The trailer’s closing frames subtly included the phrase "scariest thing I ever saw," directing fans to ScariestThingIEverSaw.com, where they encountered a PDP-11 16-bit microcomputer interface. Alongside RocketPoppeteers.com, these sites explored the narrative of a scientist’s son whose actions unleash an alien from a derailed train, causing chaos on Earth.
