Is this the beginning of the viral marketing of David Fincher‘s re-adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or a legally dubious behind the scenes grab from a fearless crew member? I think it’s perhaps the former. About a day ago a very brief behind the scenes clip appeared online from a very strange source. The video fleetingly shows Daniel Craig as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist looking over pictures under the direction of Fincher.
More interesting though is the blog this has come from. It started a couple of weeks ago and is dedicated to releasing material about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The tumblr blog is called Mouth Taped Shut and despite releasing some pretty special insider material, it has yet to be taken down by Sony Pictures, which suggests this is part of the marketing campaign. Also, a more official sign is that this a registered domain and the Youtube channel has no previous videos and disabled comments.
It also fits to the segment of Stieg Larsson’s story and presumably, the film. The lead character Lisbeth Salander, is a computer hacker and this steady leak of material from an anonymous source does have reflections with a plot point in the story. A similar theory was bandied around by bloggers when the red band trailer for the film was ‘leaked’ online.
If this is a marketing campaign, then it is a very clever one. More along the lines of the JJ Abrams/Christopher Nolan methods of marketing. You can watch this behind the scenes clip below and chuckle to yourself when the meticulous Fincher asks Craig to “lower the book to the left a teeny bit.”
