Mother! What a Flawed Marketing Campaign For Darren Aronofsky's Next Movie

If you’re a horror fan step in. I must admit, I have watched a fair share of horror movies, and this one was on my radar thanks to its star-studded cast. But the combination of the trailer that came out yesterday and the name of the movie made me think about one thing: Rosemary's Baby.

Maybe it’s a misdirect, but so far, I just don’t think so. And another Rosemary Baby's type of movie does not make me happy. At all. But I will give it the benefit of the doubt, or maybe there will be some clever twist. I really don’t want another creepy baby movie. As a woman, I am tired of that trope.

But, with the trailer a new poster for the movie came out. And as someone who really enjoys analyzing movie campaigns and doing movie predictions, these two posters are fascinating.

This is new poster:

This is the old one:

Why fascinating? Because they only star Jennifer Lawrence. The cast of this movie includes: Javier Bardem (his name is on one poster, but people know his face, he was a Bond villain after all), Ed Harris (now made popular again thanks to Westworld), Michelle Pfeiffer (she’s always famous, but also on the rise again with a role in Murder on the Orient Express and she will be Janet van Dyne in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Marvel everywhere), Domhnall Gleeson (who is now in every single movie nowadays including X Machina, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Revenant) and many more. That’s a lot of famous people. And one not so popular anymore Jennifer Lawrence. Just to remind you, Passengers made just $303,144,152 on a $110,000,000 budget, and she had Chris Pratt to help her publicize the movie. Putting her front and center could turn out to be an unwise decision. Plus, now that audiences seem to blame her for Chris Pratt and Anna Faris divorcing, although there seems to be no basis for these allegations, but that's more negative buzz surrounding her and she already has plenty.

Another thing to consider is Jennifer Lawrence box office numbers outside of the Hunger Games and X-Men (which she now publicly states she returns for only for money). This movie needs to compare to Darren Aronofsky previous big Oscar movie Black Sawn. I don’t see a reason to have such a cast other than to go for an Oscar, for himself. I guess he didn’t hear that Sofia Coppola is really hot this year. Black Swan made $329,398,046. Silver Linings Playbook made $236,412,453, American Hustle made $251,171,807, Joy made $101,134,059.

Passengers is the only movie that came close, because it was a big budget production and it cost a lot a money to make as opposed to the humble $13 million that Black Swan cost to make. Like most actors, she brings in more money within an established franchise. No matter how much she hates it.

It could be that Jennifer Lawrence really is the biggest box office name that this movie has, but this choice could backfire at the box office as audiences are getting tired of her. Either way, I don’t think Darren Aronofsky cares. Just like Roman Polanski won his Oscar for Rosemary's Baby, I think that Darren Aronofsky hopes the same thing will happen to him. I really doubt it.

Mother! Comes out on 15 September.

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