11 Upcoming Movies That Have Ignored Massive Mistakes

6. Having No Clear Target Audience - Dora & The Lost City of Gold

The Mistake

This past week the first trailer dropped for Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Nickelodeon's live-action adaptation of their beloved animated series Dora the Explorer.

But the trailer is a peculiar mix of tones, leaving the audience unsure exactly who it's supposed to be appealing to. Furthermore, despite the character being a 7-year-old in the show, the Hollywood Dora (Isabela Moner) has been "aged-up" into teenage form.

As such, it's tough to understand which target audience Paramount is trying to court with the movie: the late-teens/early-20s crowd who "grew up" with the original show, or younger kids?

An animated Dora the Explorer movie or a film with a younger lead actress would've honestly made more sense messaging-wise, but the first trailer for the movie is ultimately more an exercise in brand confusion than anything.

The Lesson

It's not a perfectly analogous example, but last year's Taron Egerton-starring Robin Hood reboot suffered a similar fate.

The marketing fired off in countless directions without having any clearly defined targets: it made a half-assed effort to appeal to Egerton fans, anyone who liked Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, fans of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, and least of all, people who actually like Robin Hood.

The confused marketing did at least reflect the film itself, which tried to be many things to many people, and without a delineated target audience, it tanked catastrophically.