Tropic Thunder Pours Out the Booty Sweat
Paramount Pictures is hoping Booty Sweat leaves a good taste in America’s mouth. (We know, it felt disgusting just writing that.)
The studio has announced plans to market a real version of the aforenamed energy drink that can be spied periodically throughout the upcoming Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as actors who get left behind in an actual war zone after ticking off the director of the war film they’re supposed to be acting in.
While product tie-ins and increasingly viral marketing campaigns are nothing newwhat would McDonalds and Burger King do without Disney, hobbits and superheroes?Paramount believes that by actually creating a usable product to promote an upcoming film, not to mention one that will compete against Rockstar and Red Bull, they’ve broken the mold.
“Not to my knowledge has this ever been done before,” Paramount’s president of consumer products, Michael Corcoran, told Advertising Age. “We’re very excited, because it has the potential to live for quite a while, well beyond the film.”
Products such as Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, the crops-killing Gatorade-like substance in the 2006 Mike Judge comedy Idiocracy, have hit stores before, but usually not until long after a film’s release, once fans are more familiar with the concepts. Brawndo just debuted in December, while Sex Panther, named after Paul Rudd’s most outré cologne in Anchorman, won’t be on shelves until September, and the film premiered in 2004.
But you’ll actually be able to chug a can of cherry-tinged Booty Sweat while watching Tropic Thunder, which rolls into theaters Aug. 15.
It will be available in two different cansone designating an urban flavor that will pump up a “brotha’s ass right-pronto” and the other promising simple energy for a more staid crowdin college bookstores, the retail outlets Hot Topic, Wherehouse and Coconuts and through Amazon.com. A few hundred thousand cases have been produced so far.
I Want My MTV (in L.A.)!
Temps are soaring in Hollywood today, but it’s gonna get a whole lot hotter in September!
The MTV Video Music Awards are returning to the City of Angels for the first time in 10 years.
The 2008 VMAs will take place Sunday, September 7, at the Paramount Pictures studio lot in Hollywood, Entertainment Weekly reports. The official lineup and host for the festivities are expected to be announced on Monday.
In the past decade, the unpredictable awards ceremony was staged in Miami and New York. The 2007 VMAs in Las Vegas is best remembered for Britney Spears’ much hyped, critically panned “comeback” performance.
Godfather Heir to Paramount: Game On!
Where’s Luca Brasi when you need him?
Keeping his friends close and his enemies closer, the son of late Godfather author Mario Puzo is suing Paramount Pictures for allegedly screwing the family out of royalties from a 2006 video game based on the Mafia-friendly franchise.
A rep for Paramount declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
The lawsuit, filed June 18 in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Anthony Puzo, claims the studio breached its contract with Puzo’s estate by failing to fork over revenue generated from The Godfather: The Game, published and distributed by Electronic Arts.
According to the complaint, Paramount inked a deal with the elder Puzo in 1992seven years before his death at the age of 78to give him a cut of the profits from any ancillaries, specifcally audiovisual products that contain elements of the hit series, including dialogue and characters.
“Despite the vast wealth Puzo created for Paramount, it has refused to pay his children their agreed share of the revenue from that audio-visual product,” the suit states.
Drawing on the book and its three films, the game allowed players to work their way up from street hood to don and featured the voices of such castmembers as James Caan, Robert Duvall and Abe Vigoda reprising their roles as hotheaded son Sonny Corleone, consiglieri Tom Hagen and traitor Salvatore Tessio, respectively.
The younger Puzo’s suit seeks at least $1 million in damages.
This Week In Lawsuits
Everywhere you look, people are suin’ mad!
Queen Latifah has sued Perfect Christmas Productions, the production company behind The Perfect Holiday (2007, starring Terrance Howard and Gabrielle Union) for breach of contract. The Queen says that she has not been paid for her cameo in the movie. She’s seeking $275,000. Even though the movie was basically a dud, only making $5.8 million domestically and scoring a 2.3 on IMDb (#91 in the bottom 100 rated movies…ouch!), the production company had been able to raise millions from third party investors to make the film. Latifah did her job, and girl just wants to get paid! Chances are this will be settled relatively quickly. They wouldn’t want to ruin their image before the DVD release!
Also throwing his hand into the suing pot is the son of Godfather creator, Anthony Puzo. What’s got his gun in a twist? Apparently, Paramount Pictures failed to pay him royalties for the 2006 video game they released based on his father’s work! Mario Puzo died in 1999, and Anthony is in charge of his estate, which includes an agreement with Paramount to receive a “significant share” of the revenues from any audio or visual products that included elements of “The Godfather” films…which OBVIOUSLY includes video games! Puzo is seeking $1 million for this breach of contract issue. I don’t blame him! Why do big studios think they can just use people’s work and not pay them? First New Line versus Peter Jackson and the Tolkien estate, now this! Note to studios: Stop pissing off the people behind your money makers!