POSTERS

Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Marketing Kicks into High Gear

by Alex Billington
March 6, 2008
Source: JoBlo

Right now I'm in love with all things viral marketing, and I don't think I'm alone. Judd Apatow and the Universal marketing team also seem to know the current power of viral at the moment and have launched a new site for the upcoming comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. In the movie, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) has been dating the ridiculously hot celebrity Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) and is about to ask to marry her right before she breaks up with him. In an attempt to rid himself of the media swarm surrounding their celebrity break-up, Peter travels to Hawaii and finds out that she is there at the same hotel on vacation with a new boyfriend. Universal has launched a very ballsy new poster for the film as well as Peter Bretter's personal blog - where he professes his lover for Sarah over and over.

The new site is over at www.ilovesarahmarshall.com. "Well, I'm Peter Bretter; I'm 26...a television composer who has the world's hottest girlfriend...Sarah Marshall from TV's CRIME SCENE. We've been together for five years." You can head over and check out his quite real blog posts talking about how much he loves Sarah and the sneaky things he's doing for her, like creating a video archive for her when he asks her to marry him. The only thing I can really say is "poor guy". He doesn't even know the shit storm that is about to hit him. Click the photo below to visit the site.

The best thing this movie has going for it is definitely Jason Segel. He played one of Seth Rogen's lazy friends in Knocked Up and has been popping up in Judd Apatow movies for quite a while, in addition to be one of the guys from "Freaks and Geeks". This is his first major role and he seems like a strong enough natural comedian to really bring something unique to the role - very much like Rogen in Knocked Up. The panel for Forgetting Sarah Marshall at WonderCon was hilarious primarily because of everything he was saying during it.

Going along with the hating Sarah Marshall theme that's sort of been established so far, Universal has released one of the bravest posters I've seen in a while. Simple, powerful, and yet completely disconnected from the title of the movie, well, sort of. Check this out:

It reminds me a LOT of the original Little Miss Sunshine posters that Fox Searchlight put out that didn't work well before they changed them up for a poster that had everyone running for the van. I'm guessing they might do the same here because I don't think this poster is going to get them too far. But if it succeeds and this movie takes off, I'll be incredibly impressed. I want it do good and I'm hoping for the best, but this isn't a huge help. Even putting a poster out with the gorgeous Kristen Bell on it somewhere would help a lot more than this, unfortunately.

Thanks to JoBlo for originally pointing this out and finding the poster. If you haven't already seen the trailer - go watch it right here! I'm curious to know if anyone else is interested in this besides me. I've got high hopes but I don't want to be the only one expecting something great.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is directed by first-time feature filmmaker Nicholas Stoller and written by the film's star, Jason Segel. The movie hits theaters everywhere on April 18th - don't miss it!

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