The Hollywood Reporter

How Disney’s ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Marketing Battled Franchise Saturation: With only five months separating the Han Solo film from ‘The Last Jedi,’ the studio faced unique challenges. Although it received mostly favorable reviews and boasts the buzzy presence of Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, the Sabacc deck seems to have been stacked against Solo: A Star Wars Story since the moment the movie was announced by Lucasfilm in July 2015. (Note: You can read even more in my recap post here.)

Cinematic Slant

Cinematic Slant is where I write about movies, including the campaign recaps I’ve been doing since 2004 along with other news and opinions.

How Would The Blues Brothers Fare Today?: Were the movie to come out today – or even if it were to get some sort of substantial theatrical re-release (it will turn 40 in three years) – it would rightly get slammed for its depiction of the white savior who adopts black culture as their own and decide they are the best one to defend it. The way black people are portrayed as secondary participants in their own culture is…not great.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties – Marketing Recap: The right kind of audience, the ones predisposed to like this kind of movie, are going to find it and may latch on to it, turning it into whatever the new term for “cult classic” these days is. There’s also a nice, consistent attitude that pervades the campaign, meaning if someone sees it, they’ll know pretty quickly what kind of movie is being sold and how.

Duping the Moviegoing Public: If I’d paid for Deadpool 2 tickets I’d feel pretty burnt right now. What did I pay for? How was that experience worth the expense?

Mary Shelley – Marketing Recap: It’s a nice, moody campaign IFC put together here but it’s not going to amount to much, I don’t think. There have been a number of these gothic-tinged movies about female writers struggling to overcome the norms of the society they’re shackled to recently but none have caught any fire. Fanning is about the strongest draw in the whole thing.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.