Just under a month to go until Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen hits cinemas and the marketing campaign is kicking into overdrive.
You can find all the latest trailers and movie posters here.
The promotion isn’t going to be quite as big as initially planned however, with one of the key advertising partners from the first film, GM Motors, on the verge of financial collapse and is downgrading its contribuition to the marketing budget.
Don't worry - still plenty of Megan Fox headed our way.
The studio is bouncing back with a viral marketing campaign that got underway last week. It’s a strategy that got them plenty of buzz in the first film, and they will be looking to repeat the dose here.
The release comes at a difficult time, surrounded as it is by big budget movies such as Star Trek, Wolverine and Terminator: Salvation. That aside, studio hopes remain high. Transformers was a box office monster in 2007, and plenty of pundits are predicting this to be another box office success story for Michael Bay.
What about the critical response though? Throughout his career Bay has been lampooned over his preference for action and glamour (not to mention product placement) over plot and character development. Admittedly, some of his films have missed their mark pretty widely (and I hated Pearl Harbour as much as everybody else), but his position as the favourite whipping boy of critics, bloggers and journalists alike puzzles me a little.
Sure, his films tend to lack depth, he has little time for subtlety and his action sequences can be preposterously over the top – but he also makes fun, entertaining flicks that look good and perform well at the box office. Still the critics attack him like a polar bear on a gravy covered seal.
It’s a phenomenon the man himself is well aware of, and as he outlines in this interview in LA Times, he is ready for whatever backlash comes his way. Michael Bay knows you hate him: “There’s a lot of poison on the internet…whatever”.
Cinestuff 