I have heard a couple of people say that Universal has done a poor job of marketing King Kong so far, but I really have to disagree. It’s too easy to burn us out early by pumping out a bunch of teasers and releasing too many images and doing too much PR. I think King Kong is basically pre-sold; the key is upping the anticipation.
Of course I could be wrong and Universal could actually just be dropping the ball on this one. Look, I’m not Jesus. But they certainly will soon begin promoting the film in a big way, and one of the things they’ll be doing is releasing a two-disc set the day before the movie hits theaters.
No, it won’t be the film itself on the DVDs, but rather the complete King Kong video diaries, which Peter Jackson has been filming for kongisking.net (which somehow claims to not be affiliated with the film, and to be a fan production. Please. I like the site, but that’s about as much a fansite at this point as www.x3movie.com, which I don’t have the strength to give its own news story, so there you go). The discs will be packaged with a making of book, and will be the first time a studio sells behind the scenes material BEFORE a film is released. It will be called King Kong: Peter Jackson’s Complete Production Diaries.
I hope that this means that the eventual DVD release of the film won’t just be a rehashing of the web features, like the first editions of all the Lord of the Rings films. However, since it’s a Universal film, I fully expect the DVD release to be botched, mishandled and completely shitty.
Release an unbelievably lame Big Lebowski DVD on our message board!