Pretty much everyone is in tough economic times except the movie studios, which are dead-set on wringing as much money out of us as possible this year, and will use the forces of football to do it. The price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad rose to $3 million this year, and while regular sponsors like FedEx and General Motors had to bow out, all of Hollywood is ready to rumble.
Variety reports that pretty much every studio will have a big ad for one of their summer blockbusters. It's the usual suspects you would guess-- Wolverine from Fox, G.I. Joe and Star Trek from Paramount, Angels & Demons from Sony. Smaller studios like MGM and Summit will be absent, but even more surprisingly, Warner Bros. won't play either, thinking their movies Terminator: Salvation, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Watchmen won't stand out in the crowd. Or, maybe they realize that Terminator and Harry Potter already have built-in audiences and Watchmen may or may not exist come Super Bowl Sunday.
We've already reported on the biggest promotion, a 90-second 3D ad for the Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens. So while pretty much every year you wind up talking about the commercials at work the day after the Super Bowl, this one in particular may be the one to save the bathroom breaks for whenever the losing team has the ball.
