A different kind of market news has been trending as of late, all thanks to a new highly anticipated film that is hitting movie theaters tomorrow. This movie is a different kind of ‘superhero’ film, about Deadpool, a mercenary with expedited healing powers. This is not your typical Marvel-type hero film with superhumans fighting for good. This one is Fox’s attempt to disrupt the movie market with an edgier, more inappropriate film about someone with special abilities, while being able to retain the movie and franchising rights so they can make more money. So far, the movie has incredible reviews on popular movie review websites and everyone interested in comic books is planning to rush to the theater the second it is released. It seems Fox will be successful in its endeavor.
Deadpool as a character is likeable in his humor, but also has a disturbing, psychopathic personality. Fox chose him as the focus for their next movie for this very reason - they could not make money on widely known superhero figures, so they focused on a smaller franchise which is quickly growing. Deadpool’s obscurity should have made it more difficult for Fox to disrupt the movie market, as many do not buy into that with which they are not familiar. However, Fox ran a series of successful marketing campaigns to spread awareness of Deapool’s disturbing, yet hilarious, personality.
They have taken risks that probably would not have worked with a character any less weird. The first jarring campaign involved a poop emoji on a billboard. Risky? Of course. However, it did catch the attention of the public. They also took the newsletter route, posting funny blurbs with pictures of Deapool in front of a fire. It can be agreed that none of their marketing tactics have been conventional, which fits perfectly with such an unconventional character.
They then took to social media, as all good marketing campaigns should. The Deadpool campaign continued with a new slew of Deadpool emojis and a fake instagram feud between the Deadpool character and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds, the actor playing the character Deadpool, has been flooding his Twitter page with movie promotions for at least a month. Deadpool the character even has a profile on the popular dating app Tinder.
All of these tactics has made Deadpool a highly anticipated movie by fans all over the world. Fox has done its job talking up this movie to the public, now we will just have to wait until tomorrow to see just how much it affects the movie market.
For more information on how the Deadpool movie will affect the market, read Forbes’ article on Deadpool cornering the comic book movie market.
