2. "This Message Will Self-Destruct In..." - Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Mission: Impossible III is a action film starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent, Ethan Hunt, who comes face to face with a twisted and sadistic arms dealer. In order to protect his fiancée with whom he wanted to settle down and live a normal life with, he must try to keep his identity a secret from the arms dealer. With a budget of $150,000,000 and a worldwide gross of $397,850,012, it's safe to say it was a success at the box office, although thanks to Marvel's recent billion dollar success' at the box office, this film pales in comparison. Even high profile films get their promotional stunts wrong. To promote the film, Paramount rigged 4,500 randomly selected Los Angeles Times vending boxes with digital audio players which would play the theme song when the door was opened. The audio players did not always stay concealed, however, and in many cases came loose and fell on top of the stack of newspapers in plain view, with the result that they were widely mistaken for bombs. Police bomb squads detonated a number of the vending boxes and even temporarily shut down a veterans' hospital in response to the apparent "threat." Despite these problems, Paramount and The LA Times opted to leave the audio players in the boxes until two days after the movie's opening. While the film itself was disappointingly flat, despite the always terrific Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, it was successful enough to see two sequels commissioned, the latest instalment due to hit screens in Summer 2015. Clearly the marketing men got something right.