10 Most Ridiculous Movie Marketing Campaigns
6. Literally Pretending The Cast Is Dead - The Blair Witch Project
Viral movie marketing as know it basically wouldn't exist without The Blair Witch Project, which offered up one of the most creative - and controversial - campaigns in cinema history.
Basically, Artisan Entertainment commissioned a marketing firm to create an incredibly convincing online paper trail, complete with false news reports and staged interviews, suggesting that the film's three young leads were actually missing for real and that the found footage film was entirely authentic.
The IMDB pages for actors Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard even listed them as "missing, presumed dead" for a year, while the trio were also instructed to avoid making major public appearances during the film's release.
Though it might seem a tad silly today that such an obvious ruse could fool anyone, 1999 was a very different time, long before audiences en masse were savvy to viral marketing tricks.
It was nothing short of a creative masterstroke, and doubtless helped the film become a must-see event, leading it to gross $248.6 million worldwide against a mere $500,000 budget.