20 Alternative 2017 Movie Awards
The best, worst, and everything else in between.
We are now officially in awards season, which means there will be statues aplenty handed out around Hollywood as the rich and famous congratulate themselves on all their hard work over the last twelve months. While that may sound a little cynical, awards season can increase exposure and be a huge boost to the profile of the smaller movies that don't have the power of the marketing machine behind them.
There seems to be an awards show of some description every couple of days at this time of the year, with largely the same people nominated in the same categories, with the results less likely to vary the closer it gets to the big one; the Academy Awards. But f**k the Academy Awards, let's do something a little different.
In the spirit of awards season and in the midst of the reflective period that is early January, it's time to dish out some awards of a different kind. These are accolades that you don't usually find Hollywood types rewarding themselves for, and completely ignore the usual batch of prestige pictures and awards-baiting drama in favor of some of the more overlooked aspects of 2017 in cinema, from both ends of the spectrum. Obviously, spoilers follow...
20. Best Marketing Campaign - It
When the first teaser trailer for your movie gets 197 million views in just 24 hours (becoming the most-viewed trailer ever on YouTube in the process), you know that the marketing team must be doing something right.
Dropping the first official image way back in July 2016, IT's slow-burning marketing campaign generated huge buzz for the project on social media and almost every conceivable media platform, a strategy that saw anticipation rise to fever pitch over the following year.
The atmospheric and unnerving trailers held back on jump scares and big reveals, opting instead to focus on tension and suspense, a refreshing change in a time when most trailers tend to blow all of their 'money shots' in the space of a 90-second ad.
The pitch-perfect advertising for Andy Muschietti's IT saw the $35m horror flick transform transcend the genre entirely to become a cultural phenomenon and box office juggernaut to boot, with a final box office total of $698.8m comfortably making it the highest-grossing horror movie in history.