As expected, the marketing for The Dark Knight isn’t strictly viral. They’re also going the traditional routes of sponsoring candy and cereals. The Bat Blog has a picture of the new Dark Knight-themed Reese’s Peanut Butter cup.
Not only have they plastered the wrapping with The Dark Knight, but the candy itself is in the shape of the Bat-Signal. Now that’s cool.
After yesterday’s news that The Joker had defaced some copies of the new Dark Knight trailer, we were all hoping someone would be able to play the film reel so we could see more than just scans of the film. Luckily, someone did. Check it out below.
A few lucky viewers of the new Dark Knight trailer also got a nice take-home gift - trailer reels that had been graffitied by The Joker. One such London viewer named Chris Presswell posted pictures of the reels on his blog. The Joker added things like “Mama’s Boy” to a scene with Batman, and a heart with the Joker facepaint over Maggie Gyllenhaal’s face. Check out one of the scans below.
The hunt ended with the scavengers getting to see the new trailer. While the official trailer won’t be released online until this weekend, someone videotaped it and you can check it out below. It’s a little fuzzy, but the quality is surprisingly good. EDIT: YouTube pulled the trailer. We’ll post the official one when it’s available.
One of the bowling ball packages from The Joker’s April Fool’s day search is on sale at eBay. Starting bid is $1,000 or you can Buy It Now for $15,000. The good news is, shipping is only $13.
The auction includes the bowling ball, bag, Joker card, note from The Joker, and prepaid cell phone that was used to report the ball found. The ball is also engraved with the “thug name” given for when the finder called the number from the cell phone.
This particular ball was found at Woodhaven Lanes in Queens, NY, which just happens to be my hometown bowling alley from when I was a kid.
The auction ends April 19th, so start bidding now or buy it now and you can send it to me for my birthday next week. Or, you know, keep it, I guess.
The upcoming release of DVD of Cloverfield has the internet buzz picking up again. The Bad and the Ugly has a roundup of the information spreading on the DVD, and new stuff on the viral sites. There’s a new poster on one of the viral sites for a “missing man” named Teddy. Some seem to think this is hype not for the DVD, but for Cloverfield 2. We’ll see.
The DVD will be out April 22nd, and includes two alternate endings. Hopefully one of them will be less sucky than the theatrical version.
The latest marketing scheme for The Dark Knight involved a new viral site for The Joker character called clowntravelagency.com, which gave users a list of addresses. The addresses turned out to be bowling alleys where users could find a bowling ball and other swag if they followed the directions.
The IESB has a complete start-to-finish rundown of the game and the new game it led to. Turns out, even Lt. Gordon is getting in on the marketing fun.
Harvey Dent’s campaign team will be out and about the country soon. The I Believe In Harvey Dent website has a map with dates and times of Harvey’s campaign in various cities around the country. You can download your own campaign posters and join the crowds. The website also asks you to upload photos of you and your friends campaigning for Harvey.
Also on The Dark Knight front, the MTV Movies Blog has revealed new figures, including the much-anticipated Heath Ledger as the Joker figure.
The Guardian is reporting on an extremely violent ad campaign for Untraceable that was pulled from Facebook recently. They say the promotional Facebook Page titled “Kill With Me” featured this text,
This guy is going to die. You want to see his stinking flesh burn and bleed and blacken? Until he’s some twisted dead thing? This is what you want. And I’ve filmed it especially for you. The more fans I get, the more I’ll show…
This violent content fits with the film but was removed from Facebook because the marketing company failed to put age restrictions on the page to protect younger Facebook users.
Untraceable stars Diane Lane as an FBI computer crimes specialist investigating a series of murders using the website killwithme.com, which is a live URL hosting a promotional site for the movie.
Since I live in New England, the Super Bowl was a disappointment last night, even though I only watch football during the Super Bowl. Even worse, the ads were a huge disappointment. Ads every five minutes for “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” made me want to watch the show even less, and some of the ads were spots that have been running during regular TV for weeks.
That being said, there were a few good spots. The “Prison Break” ad was really well done, but I’m biased since I watch the show.
The two Career Builder spots were typical Super Bowl shock ads, but I enjoyed them anyway:
Four ads worth talking about the next day is barely worthy of a Super Bowl that had so much riding on it. And don’t even get me started on the GoDaddy ad…I certainly didn’t bother to go to their website to see the Danica Patrick “Exposed” ad that they weren’t allowed to show on TV - and I was sitting on the couch with my laptop in front of me.
I just spotted a short Cloverfield TV ad that actually showed the monster. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the first time they’ve started showing the monster in promos. Maybe they want to prove to all the naysayers that the monster is, indeed, awesome.
Has anyone seen the same ad? Or an earlier version showing the monster?
UPDATE 02/04/08: The new spot is now up on YouTube. Check it out below.
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Release Date 8/29/2008 
One of the bowling ball packages from The Joker’s April Fool’s day search is 
