Put A Bit Of Effort Into The Movie Titles
In a packed season of movies, how do you ensure that an original movie can grab an audience? Give it a catchy title. How many people do you think watched the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow and could then remember its title when they exited the theater after the feature presentation? Probably not too many. (Perhaps the studio should have stuck with the fantastic original moniker, All You Need is Kill.) Now that Warner Bros. is emphasizing the Live, Die, Repeat slogan in its DVD release, maybe they should have given the film that name.
Meanwhile, Canadian audiences are coming out in good numbers for The F Word. Haven’t heard of it? Well, CBS Studios retitled the romantic comedy with Daniel Radcliffe the awful and generic What If. Unsurprisingly, the film is one of the summer’s biggest disappointments in the United States, but it is doing quite well north of the border.
Titles do not have to be clever. I mean, this is a year where the movie about LEGO was called The LEGO Movie – and it was great. When releasing your movie in a crowded session, make the title something people will remember. Why call a biopic about the electrifying Godfather of Soul something as bland as Get On Up? How many people would know what Blended was, without the mention of Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler? How many people would remember the name Begin Again from the trailer? (The film’s original title was Can a Song Save Your Life?) Meanwhile, the grammatically incorrect title Wish I Was Here may have pulled in more crowds if it were called “Golden State.”
These underperforming films suggest that if the title does not resonate with an audience from a trailer or a commercial, crowds may not remember to check their listings to see if that film with what’s-his-name about such-and-such is playing.
