The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Promotional Campaign
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher’s adaptation of the best-selling Steig Larsson book of the same name. When news spread out of an American remake of the Swedish film people were sceptical as the Swedish version was pretty spot on.
Some of the first publicity for the movie came in the form of a profile of Mara in particular and the movie in general (W, February 2011) that featured some of the first looks at the actress in character in a variety of provocative shots.
After a bit of a break then things heated up around the first of June when a European trailer was “leaked” and got people talking. The trailer featured lots of violence and a brief bit of nudity, something that earned it a red-band designation. The inclusion of that American rating on a European trailer caused more than a few people to question whether or not this was an orchestrated leak, with most people being in the “of course it was” camp not only because of that but because the camera work wasn’t all that shaky and the sound was almost perfect. Regardless of the legitimacy of that “leak” it absolutely accomplished the goal of getting people talking and excited about this remake just before the official U.S. trailer was released to the internet. This shows that even when the audience suspect they are being manipulated, the manipulation can still work.
The campaign continued with a teaser poster showing Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara together as the two leads of the film. It was released on 2nd June 2011 and gives the film release date as 21st December of the same year.The poster is dark in its colour choice and with a half naked Mara. It showed that the film wouldn’t shy away from the dark sections that were previously shown in the Swedish version and that nothing is being taken down a notch. The tagline ‘Evil shall with Evil Be Expelled’ references the violent side of the book but the only way a non fan of the series could tell what it was is the address along the bottom ‘dragontattoo.com’ This is a teaser poster as the production credits aren’t along the bottom. There is an assumption here that a sufficient percentage of the target audience will already have a lot of knowledge that they will be bringing to this campaign.
This is the first teaser trailer for the film and was released along with the poster on 2nd June 2011. It gives little away with the plot but with the dark shots and metal cover of Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song it gives off the clear message that this will follow the book. It is a teaser trailer as it just a collection of shots from the movie out of chronological order. It also contains a new tagline ‘the feel bad movie of Christmas’ and references the world famous trilogy to get people interested. The point of this trailer is to show it’s not a watered down version of the original and the quick cuts showing different scenes prove this.
A feature interview (Esquire, 6th July 2011) with Craig gave some insights into the actor’s approach to violence, what sort of things he does in his down time and what he thought of the movie’s themes and such. Craig continued to weigh in on the subject of the film’s violence as well as the controversial poster featuring a topless Mara.
The next trailer was released on October 3rd 2011 and is the Official trailer for the film. In terms of a campaign for the uninitiated this trailer is much more effective as it gives a story to the film and is almost a slowed down version of the previous trailer. It’s very intriguing and full of mystery to get people asking questions.
The next poster was released a week after the official trailer on 10th October and is more artistically impressive than the teaser. The grey background with a snow lining still creates the darkness the film is putting forwards but this time it is accompanied with production and cast credits showing it is an official poster. The two central characters are both shown although nothings is given away and another tagline is presented ‘what is hidden in the snow comes forth in the thaw’ which is a reference to the mystery of the book. The tagline is also associated with the viral campaign.
Online campaign
If you do nothing after the official website loads you’ll be treated to a slide show of a dozen or more images from the movie rotating around. All are beautiful and are therefore worth watching.After you do that a bit you can click the Menu and dive in to the site’s content, the first of which is “Characters,” where you can learn more about the people in the film and then the actors who portray them. Those cast bios are also available in the “About” section along with Filmmaker information and a Story synopsis that’s alright for those who aren’t already familiar with the material.“Photos” has some very mysterious looking pictures, not simply the promotional stills that these sections usually contain. “Videos” then has the teaser and theatrical trailers.
There’s also a section on the “Trilogy History” that takes you into the background of the novels published by Stieg Larsson, who finished all three books but then passed away before the first one was ultimately published.
There was also a website and Twitter account setup called Mouth Taped Shut that featured set photos (professionally taken and uploaded, not discreetly shot and posted) that showed various promotional imagery and which you’d have to be naive wasn’t official either from the studio or from Fincher himself.
That Tumblr blog led to the discovery of another site, Comesforthinthethaw.com, that eventually featured some new images and other material. There was alsoWhatishiddeninthesnow.com, which seemed to play a part in a much larger effort that involved sending real packages to people to help the unlock various online clues.
Close to release a video was added to the MTS site that was a recreation of a “Hard Copy” style TV news magazine show episode devoted to the murder/disappearance that forms the mystery at the core of the story.
Eventually the “viral” campaign would end by leading people to early screenings of the movie designed to spark some pre-release word-of-mouth.
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