Saturday, September 21, 2013

Retro Product Placement?

In seeing the movie Total Recall (the original one) again, I am reminded of lots of other sci-fi movies where we see big advertisements all over the place in the movies. But oddly for contemporary viewers, many of these companies featured in sci-fi movies of the recent past (but with future dates) no longer exist, like Pan Am and TWA airlines, etc. And that makes me think: hey, what an opportunity for current companies! We all saw how George Lucas added extra digital stuff to his Star Wars movies as they went to DVD and such, so why not offer companies an opportunity to buy product placement from BluRay releases of movies where the original companies no longer exist? And actually, if that works, why not simply sell the rights to all the in-movie advertising for each and every movie that ever comes out on cable, On Demand, DVD, BluRay, streaming, etc., and just replace whatever was originally there (or add as needed)? Sure the company paid their money, but they couldn’t have anticipated all the future technologies for film distribution, right? So then doesn’t that negate their original contracts? And if not, then can’t the movie people just say some hacker attack or sunspot radiation erased all the contracts or something? And besides, by doing this sort of thing, where newer companies replace older, no longer existing companies (and out-of-date or no-longer hot/cool ones), wouldn’t that make the movie more relevant for current audiences and as such make the movies more believable? Because after all, isn’t it all about the movie experience (and cashing in on product placement)?