10 Most Ridiculous Movie Marketing Campaigns

10. Newspaper Machines With Audio Devices (Which Were Mistaken For Bombs) - Mission: Impossible III

Perhaps the single best-known aspect of the Mission: Impossible franchise - apart from Tom Cruise running, that is - is the classic "this message will self-destruct" shtick, which Paramount ambitiously - if foolishly - leaned into with a marketing stunt for the third film.

Paramount commissioned marketing firm Allied Advertising to fit 4,500 LA newspaper vending machines with devices which would play the series' distinctive theme tune whenever someone opened the machine to collect a newspaper.

Unfortunately, in a number of locations people understandably mistook the devices for bombs, resulting in one machine being blown up the bomb squad.

Elsewhere, a Veterans Affairs Medical Center had to be evacuated for 90 minutes after someone called in a bomb scare for a nearby vending machine.

Ultimately the US attorney's office planned to sue Paramount, Allied Advertising, and the Los Angeles Times for conspiring to pull off the stunt, though the matter was eventually settled out of court for $75,000.

Regardless of the botched stunt, Mission: Impossible III grossed a respectable $398.5 million worldwide.