10 Desperate Ways To Market Horror Movies

6. Creating Fake News Websites - A Cure For Wellness

A Cure For Wellness Fake News
20th Century Fox

With it these days alarming to see just how easy "fake news" gets spread across the media and beyond, 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises decided to jump on this bandwagon in order to promote 2017's A Cure for Wellness.

Desperate to grab attention for this Gore Verbinski psychological horror, Fox and Regency hired a group of fake news creators to build faux websites and dream up fake stories based on the real world. For example, these sites ran stories on Donald Trump taking secret meetings with Vladimir Putin, abortions to be punished by jail time, vaccinations being outright banned, and countless other BS tales - all while A Cure for Wellness was mildly alluded to.

Adding further to all of this, a 40-second A Cure for Wellness commercial aired during Super Bowl LI. The only thing is, you wouldn't know it was a commercial for A Cure for Wellness unless you knew it was a commercial for A Cure for Wellness; that being down to how the footage was framed as an advertisement for a form of medication.

Again, this whole process of utilising fake news to slyly promote a movie felt morally wrong, underhand, absolutely tasteless and totally desperate.

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 day job, 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/Saints, Jamie Hayter, 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. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.