10 Desperate Ways To Market Horror Movies

1. Give Away All Of Your Secrets - Terminator Genisys

Sam Jackson Snakes On A Plane
Paramount Pictures

If seen with zero awareness of the promotional work, Terminator Genisys works okay as a slightly skewed 'best of' the Terminator franchise that darts off in its own direction after it's nodded and winked at the movies that preceded it.

For those who watched the trailers and saw the marketing for Genisys, though, there was a startled near-excitement at what possible twists and turns the movie could throw up.

This was all because said trailers had the bombshell reveal that John Connor - as in, the person established as the future saviour of mankind - is actually a T-3000 Terminator intent on killing his mother to stop her from stopping the dawn of Skynet that John had been fighting to stop.

Confusing? Absolutely.

If Terminator Genisys was dropping this insane twist in trailers, what else was the film going to show audiences? Well, not much.

There was no redemption of John Connor, there were no other big swerves. Instead, the Genisys marketing team had thrown all of their big shockers out on Front St. in their trailers in the hopes people would flock to cinemas to see what else would happen.

While that desperate ploy somewhat worked - the film hitting a $440 million box office from a $150 million budget - the negative response to this caused two planned Genisys sequels and a tie-in TV series to be cancelled.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.