When the announcement came last week that Donald Sutherland was cast as President Snow, the last major (or minor) uncast role in the upcoming adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, the Internets breathed a sigh of relief. This — after weeks and weeks of angry, complaining movie bloggers and journos who were SO. DARN. SICK. of all The Hunger Games press releases. To be fair, the casting announcements bordered on parody with numerous roles that will probably amount to maybe five minutes (if that) of actual screen time for actors no one really knows. In other words, the sentiment was, who cares? Who cares who is playing the 16th-largest role in a film, especially when it isn’t an actor of note? Now, Donald Sutherland happens to play a pretty major role in the series and he is certainly an actor of recognition (and since we are on the subject, it’s going to be fun to see Sutherland in evil Lockup mode again). But by then it seemed everyone was getting pretty annoyed with anything relating to The Hunger Games, so much so that one colleague wrote in an email that he was actively rooting against the franchise now because of the obnoxious publicity campaign. In other words, he’s backlashing.
RopeofSilicon‘s Brad Brevet, when reporting the Sutherland casting, wrote amusingly, “I’m beginning to think Lionsgate will find a way to continue to cast The Hunger Games until the end of time. Never before can I remember a movie where every single member of the cast was revealed in a press release.” And he’s right. The onslaught of press releases has induced scores of eye-rolling and nausea because they are so unnecessary and distinctly factitious. So, this begs the question: Has Lionsgate’s publicity already sabotaged their would-be franchise? Is this backlash going to be significant?
First of all, let me state that I understand where this little backlash comes from. I’ve read The Hunger Games and was curious as to who was going to be cast for four or five roles. Not all 87, mind you, but it’s safe to say you could count on me as an interested party. But as I read announcement after announcement regarding who was cast for what roles I found myself racking my brain as to who the actor was and who they were playing in the film and why Lionsgate felt the need to make a big deal about it. It was all so artificial and forced. But the bottom line is this: most of you reading about this may not have even heard about this supposed backlash because there isn’t really one. Because the people who are backlashing against it are such a small, minor community it doesn’t even matter. The way I see it, Lionsgate, while being annoying, is just doing its job: it’s getting people to talk about The Hunger Games. Their method — however insincere and insane — is working.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not in the “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” camp. One need only ask Jodie Foster if Mel Gibson helped promote The Beaver when his infamous profanity-laced tirade was made public. However, I can’t say the ridiculous barrage of casting announcements and the negative reaction from a very, very small group of individuals matters all that much. There is a giant backlash against the Twilight franchise, and that series seems to be doing just fine financially.
Now, it is true that fans of The Hunger Games trilogy do not come close to the vast number of Twilighters. Perhaps this is 1what makes the press releases so annoying, because the fan base is not nearly as strong or rabid as the one with the sparkling vampires. But I would venture to guess that The Hunger Games‘ success will have more to do with how good the movie is rather than how many press releases it has. It will not flop because of press release overkill. If it flops, it will likely be because the movie wasn’t quality and it didn’t have the critic-proof gene the Twilight series (clearly) has. If it stinks, it will go the way of The Golden Compass, which happened to be part of a series of books I was quite fond of. And if the film works, even the most stubborn individuals, annoyed that they were forced into reporting all those press releases (because they were forced, you see), will have to give in, because in the end, despite all our huffing and puffing, all we really want is to see, embrace, and yes, help promote, good movies.
