Hollywood, CA – To advertise your product today, you have to really stand out. This has been true for movies for the last few decades and everyday production companies are coming up with new ideas to sell tickets to their films. In 1996, upon the release of Independence Day there were fake “breaking news” broadcasts of an alien invasion. In 2010, Joaquin Phoenix had a bizarre appearance on Letterman, when he showed up bearded and ready to rap. All of it was just hype for his new movie I’m Still Here. One of the most anticipated movies of the summer, Nope, doesn’t need any help reaching fans, but that didn’t stop Jordan Peele and Monkey Paw’s production team.
On Thursday, July 7th, the sky lit up in Hollywood Hills like it normally does. But people started to notice early on in the day that there was something different about the clouds. With the help of Magic Jump, a tech company that specializes in things like augmented reality, Nope promoted it’s July 22nd release using fake clouds in the sky.
“I didn’t know if it was smoke, or smog, or what,” resident Sharon Walton told us. The Los Angeles native said in her almost 50 years in the city, she had never seen a sky quite like this one. “They didn’t move, that was when I first noticed something was different.”
Within only a few hours of word getting around, billboards were put up and airplanes tailed banners to head to Fandango and buy tickets for Peele’s third film that hits theaters later this month. The alien-cowboy film stars Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, and Steven Yeun and will also be released in IMAX.