By Drew Dietsch
| Published
I love a good movie poster. Jaws is the best movie ever made and part of that reason is because it has an iconic poster. Nowadays, I’m sure most people don’t give two licks of a Tootsie Pop about movie posters. Still, as someone who is currently employed in the business of covering movie marketing, I have to see a lot of movie posters.
There is this recurring joke about movie posters when it comes to the names of the leading stars. For decades, there have been examples where movie actor names don’t seem to correspond to their images on the poster. It’s not a new phenomenon, but two examples of films from this year have taken me to my breaking point. So much so that I’ve devolved into legitimate conspiracy theory.
The Movie Posters That Broke Me
While I was perusing a digital movie storefront to see what new releases were available, I came across a movie called Guns Up starring Kevin James and Christina Ricci. This was the first instance of a new movie poster where the names were reversed that made me loony. You can see that one above.
The other one is for a movie called Adulthood starring Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario, which you can see below under the next subheading. I saw this in a PR email very shortly after seeing the Guns Up poster and it felt like another one of the cosmic jokes that get pulled on me daily. I know there are a trillion other more important problems to solve in the world, but seeing these posters back-to-back drove me into a conspiratorial rage.
Anything To Hook Your Brain
You’ll notice that these are likely two movies that aren’t on your radar. That got me thinking that this could actually be a minor piece of strategy to get you to remember a movie if you see its poster. You’re probably not going to remember Guns Up if you just came across it, but with the mismatched actor names, that’s a potential hook for your memory.
Walking by the poster for Adulthood at a movie theater, it would probably go in and out of your brain as if it didn’t even exist. But, if you have that mismatched structuring on the poster, there’s a chance you’ll go, “Huh. That’s weird that they did that.” That alone is making a play at sticking in your brain and has a better chance than it doing things “correctly.” Having something be “off” is a way to make it more memorable.
The Boring Reality
Let’s be very clear: I do understand why this seems to happen so often. Actors negotiate for certain criteria when it comes to billing and image size/placement on marketing. Because those factors can often conflict with the eventual marketing design, we end up with a lot of movie posters where the order of the portrayed actors don’t align with their names.
I don’t actually think there is some manipulation going on here by a vast conspiracy of movie marketing firms. But this seems to happen so often that it starts to feel intentional. I’ll stop now before I invest in a corkboard and a bunch of red yarn.
