“King Kong” could thump and roar its way to box-office heights because the earliest reviews are unqualified raves for … the video game.
Long before critics or fans got to see sneak previews of Peter Jackson’s $200 million effort to remake “King Kong,” marketers for Jackson’s New Zealand empire released the accompanying video game to stores and game reviewers.
The timing is far from haphazard. For a couple of years, Jackson intended to exploit overlapping legions to recoup the giant gorilla’s costs. He knew his “Lord of the Rings” faithful were heavy game users who looked forward to manipulating “Kong” on their Xbox just as much as they longed to cheer him at the multiplex.
“Glowing reviews of the game mean they can create buzz among that core group,” said Kirk Olson, of the Minneapolis-based consumer research group Iconoculture. “That could work to drive a big opening weekend” when the film is released Dec. 14.
“The video game doesn’t just make money,” said Richard Dorman, articles editor for Giant Magazine, aimed at the 18-to-34-year-old gear and game fanatics Jackson seeks. “It’s also an ad for the movie.”
This is moviemaking as corporate conglomeration, and this season’s prime examples are “Kong” and “The Chronicles of Narnia,” set for release Friday. No sense blaming Hollywood, since these latest two are products of outsider efforts: Jackson’s New Zealand idea center and Walden Media’s search for children’s classics.
But both movies tie the American movie market more tightly to the notion of a film as only one piece of an ongoing industrial enterprise. Look beyond the hero figurines at Burger King – movie franchises now aim to exploit a 10- to 20-year production cycle selling everything from “making- of” DVDs before the film is even out, to ring tones, to anniversary boxed sets with extras planned for years after the fact.
The new business model makes directors mavericks and embedded CEOs at the same time. Jackson bragged to Wired magazine that traditional studio publicists had nothing to do with the making-of diaries he’s posted on a Kong website for more than a year. His fans wouldn’t have stood for market-tested pabulum, he believes.
But the price he pays for that creative control is adopting the publicists’ inane language. Jackson also assured Wired that he wanted to “build awareness” of Kong as early as possible. Imagine Billy Wilder, or Jim Jarmusch, saying that.
$30 million video game
Trade magazines say Jackson spent $30 million alone on the “Kong” video game, enough to make a tidy Hollywood movie in its own right.
“That’s tapping into a media- merged mindset that we see people exhibiting,” said Olson. While movies used to be seen as the highest form of popular art, “Audiences no longer see one form of entertainment as king of the hill, or Kong of the hill. No one form of media rules, in the consumer’s mind.”
In 2004, Olson noted, sales of video games and consoles surpassed the total domestic box office for movies. Steven Spielberg, he said, just signed a deal with gamers Electronic Arts that will give him more creative control, in part because users complained that Spielberg’s earlier video-game effort was not enough like a movie.
When Jackson walks into an interview room these days, he represents not just the artistic side of one movie, but the interests of thousands of cast and crew members at a sprawling entertainment complex outside Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson’s two-disc set of production diaries arrives in stores Dec. 13, one day before “Kong” gets unleashed.
“I think Peter is comfortable in that it’s not just a movie, it’s a whole universe that becomes part of people’s lives,” said Dorman, whose magazine sat down with the director to talk video games. As a CEO/filmmaker, Dorman said, “I think Jackson is the first legitimate heir to come along to George Lucas. George was the first one to partner with Burger Chef, now defunct, to promote ‘Star Wars.’ He was the first to recognize the financial, the cultural and the entertainment implications at once.”
Spielberg is no slouch at that wizardry, either, though that savvy has translated into silence for his next big venture, the historical picture “Munich” due before Christmas. “Munich” takes on the volatile subject of Palestinian terrorists slaying 11 athletes at the 1972 Olympics, and Israel’s assassinations of the culprits.
Spielberg has said through a publicist there will be no extensive interview promotions of the movie beforehand, though he reserves the right to make the talk-show circuit later.
Jackson’s multibillion dollar success with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy may make it harder for inheritors to follow the business model. Filmmakers Walden Media and Disney supposedly put $150 million into “The Chronicles of Narnia,” opening Friday, aiming straight at “LOTR” fans. Tolkien and Narnia author C.S. Lewis read their work to each other and had a close relationship, and there are many parallels between the fantasy lands they created.
Yet the computer-generated effects of “Narnia” don’t match the sophistication of “Lord of the Rings.”
Different worlds
“There is a two-edged sword of expectations” for Narnia, said Rich Wagner, who hosts a Christian website and wrote “C.S. Lewis and Narnia for Dummies.” “Narnia is a far simpler children’s story, and a diehard ‘LOTR’ fan might be disappointed in it.”
“There was a very different purpose and audience in writing them,” Wagner said. “So the challenge is to stay true to what Lewis intended, but also go deep into Peter Jackson’s world.”
But “Narnia” offers parallels with a more overtly Christian movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” employing some of the same marketing companies and techniques to bring Lewis’ story to church groups. Lewis wrote from a Christian perspective, but wanted his tale of a resurrected lion to play as mythology for those not drawn to religion.
Religious or not, computer- enhanced or flat, “Narnia” hopes to become an ongoing corporate enterprise, like “Kong” and “Harry Potter.” As with “Kong,” a Narnia video game releases to stores before the movie arrives. Walden needs a big hit, after disappointing sales for two other recent films, “I Am David” and “Around the World in 80 Days.” With seven Narnia books, there’s enough material to trot Aslan the lion steadily along a 20-year master plan – if all goes well.
Gamers may battle the White Witch into next summer and climb the Empire State Building for years to come, but at the end of the day there still needs to be a good movie.
“It all depends on how strong the movie is,” said Wagner.
Franchises work when people who already have a familiarity with what they are going to see come away satisfied – not necessarily overwhelmed, but satisfied, as another story about British schoolchildren has demonstrated.
“With ‘Harry Potter,’ people at this point know what they’re going to get,” Olson said. “There’s a trust there. The directors have very loyally adapted those books, and the story is in good hands.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
