7. Breaking News At The Superbowl - Independence Day (1996)
Independence Day was a military sci-fi film released in July 1996. On July 2nd, communication systems worldwide are sent into major disarray. The American military soon learn that it is not meteors causing the disturbance as first thought, but alien spacecraft headed for a collision course with earth. As the aliens begin to decimate points around the world, the survivors devise a plan to fight back and July 4th becomes their Independence Day. Independence Day was a massively successful film and was filmed on a $75,000,000 budget. It has so far managed a worldwide gross of $817,400,890 and is currently the 38th highest-grossing film of all time. Fox kicked off its $24 million advertising campaign with the airing of a dramatic trailer during Super Bowl XXX, which cost 1.3 million dollars alone. It's subsequent success lead many other film companies to use the Super Bowl to air commercials for its upcoming blockbusters. The advertising campaign culminated in a fake "breaking news" report. In a promotional stunt that echoed the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, which prompted audiences to believe Earth was actually being attacked by aliens. The film makers produced a 30 minute news broadcast that was 'interrupted' by breaking news of an alien attack on earth and contained footage from the film. Although extremely clever, it did prompt 911 calls from petrified viewers due to the broadcast being so realistic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNJIbybkBzM&feature=youtu.be