Marketing

Marketing around big productions always help the box office. Might be for good or bad, but it always causes a big impact. With the brazilian film "The Elite Squad" (or Tropa de Elite") for example, it might not have been on purpose, but the fact that it was the first brazilian film to hit the streets way before its original release date brought a big discussion to the film that definitely helped the huge success when it finally premiered.

Not the same thing but, with Cloverfield, marketing was a plus to make it so succesful in its first week. J.J. Abrams, the producer of "Lost" and also creator of Cloverfield, created the suspense and curiosity behind the film months before it was supposed to hit the screens. Nobody knew what Cloverfield was, and everybody went to the movie theaters on January 18th to find out what it was about.

In Brazil, however, the story was a bit different. There are just a few people, mostly fans of J.J Abrams work with Lost and other productions, that had followed the whole internet marketing with Cloverfield and were waiting eagerly to watch the movie. Most people, on the other hand, had no idea what it was until they saw the trailer at the screens or something about the premiere on the internet. But as soon as they read the title of the movie in portuguese they knew exactly what was in the film - "Cloverfield - Monster".

Cloverfield is good because it is totally different from anything around. The script is built in a total different way, it has the "Blairwitch" style of filming, as if one character was always with the camera on his hand, filming their escape from a monster that had attacked NYC. The problem is that when people hear it is about a monster, that is not very attractive. There are thousands of films about monsters and most of them are pretty dumb and bad. Cloverfield has a different approach and it is not about the monster - that is not the main story line. It is about their escape, what they feel when, for example, a character has to answer his mother on the telephone and tells her that her son is dead. It makes you feel as if you were there.

In my opinion, however, it would be a lot more succesful if not even in the film people found out what was attacking NYC. Might sound a bit crazy - but could be something like "Lost", where you never know what is the supernatural things around the island, or even if they are supernatural or not. It would be a lot more - intriguing, and would not bring the monster film stereotype to everyone who reads what the movie is all about.