11 Flat Out Lies We Were Told Just To Sell A Movie (And We Stupidly Believed)
"We're going back to the source material". Yeah, of course you are...
Press junkets give directors and actors the chance to wax lyrical about how great whatever shlock their promoting is and play down the rabid speculation of a troubled shoot. Fortunately we all know to take whats taken here with some trepidation; it's often written in the contract for these stars to be all smiley and happy about the project.
With these wild claims and trailers being as misleading as ever the question could be raised how much of the Hollywood marketing machine is false advertising? There's always those stories of people who sued distributors because Sweeney Todd was a musical or Let The Right One In was subtitled, but is there something serious here? Drive's teaser promised a Fast And Furious style action movie and Only God Forgives promised a thoughtful, well-shot film, and even though people whined a bit it's sort of accepted as a fact you can never know fully what you're getting At least sometimes it goes the other way; Up looked incredibly knockabout in previews compared to the sombre joy of the finished film.
But even a trailer's biggest lie can't match the sort of things filmmakers come out with at a junket. Today I'm going to highlight eleven directors who told massive whoppers in the hope that it'd get you to watch their latest movie. The depressing thing? In some cases it actually worked.