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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
DCM's Pete Troiano outlines what cinema has to look forward to in Q2 and beyond.
Welcome to March, the final month in what’s been a fantastic quarter with which to kick off 2015.
Family
The last week of the month sees the release of three key family films in just seven days, making it one of the hottest times in the year to target that all-important, hard-to-reach family audience before the summer. Aliens and humans form an unlikely but heart-warming friendship in Dreamworks’ Home, while Spongebob Squarepants returns with his first film in ten years, Out of Water, with much optimism surrounding his latest outing on a quest to track down an infamous burger recipe. On its opening weekend in the US, the film exceeded the original film’s opening weekend box office by a whopping 75%, so hopes are high for Spongebob’s arrival on UK shores on 27 March.
Rounding out the month is Disney’s Cinderella, a live-action remake of the classic fairytale, which will be exclusively previewed on 24 March at The May Fair Hotel at a special DCM Tuesdays screening during Advertising Week Europe. Kenneth Branagh directs Disney’s latest remake, which follows in the footsteps of 2014’s Maleficent, and has cast a mix of established Hollywood veterans and rising stars including Cate Blanchette, Helena Bonham Carter and Lily James. Click here to become a DCM Tuesdays member and secure your place at the event.
Fashion
Fashion brands and cinema’s relationship has blossomed over the last few years for a variety of reasons. As well as being able to effectively target the hard-to-reach fans of brands such as Levis and Timberland, DCM is able to offer advertisers new opportunities such as our end frame service which directs cinemagoers to their nearest store, as well as the association with high quality film that brands such as Calvin Klein have tapped into. A first time advertiser on cinema, they ran a film pack with the opening week of Fifty Shades of Grey, meaning they were able to target their market demographic with mass efficiency when considering the film’s £21m opening week.
Other fashion brands such as Adidas have taken advantage of the new flexibility surrounding cinema’s prestigious Gold Spot, taking the premium position in reel with relevant films including Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Interview and Focus to target a young, early adopting audience.
Looking back at 2014, the range of brands onscreen, from high street to luxury, shows how strong a year it was for cinema and fashion, with Uni Qlo ending up as top spender with £879K, while Puma (£660K), River Island (£474K) and Burberry (£346K) were amongst the other key spenders.
Summer
This summer sees the release of four blockbusters, all in with a chance of being the season’s smash hit. The park is open for the first time in twenty two years on 12 June in Jurassic World, with man-of-the-moment Chris Pratt taking on the genetically modified dinosaurs now wreaking havoc on Isla Nubar. The Minions return on 26 June having relocated to Antarctica in search of a new master after accidentally destroying their previous ones, while Seth Macfarlane’s most notorious character Ted has married his girlfriend Tami-Lynn in the crude, cuddly bear’s second big screen outing on 10 July. Mark Wahlberg is back, firmly attached to Ted’s side, and Amanda Seyfried has joined the cast as Ted’s lawyer to help him claim custody of his child. Taking over £30m in the UK and $549m in the US in 2012, his return is sure to be a box office smash.
However, the gem in the summer’s crown is Pixar’s Inside Out (24 July), the studio’s first release in two years. Set in the head of young girl Riley, the five emotions joy, anger, fear, sadness and anger reside in the control centre inside her mind, all jostling for control when she has to move with her family to San Francisco. By making human emotions characters and examining human’s own behaviour, Pixar have raised the bar from previous efforts Monsters University and Cars 2, producing a family film that will have the broadest audience appeal since Paddington last year.
With such a terrific slate, 2015 is truly living up to the hype as the year which keeps on giving for film fans everywhere.