First those Aint It Cool News bastards get a long cut of Knocked Up, the new Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen comedy, for their Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Now they have three exclusive poster premieres – two domestic and one international. I am so jealous!
It’s no secret that I worship at the altar of Apatow – from Freaks and Geeks to Undeclared to The 40 Year Old Virgin, I think he’s been behind some of the best comedy of the last decade. And Knocked Up – in which longtime Apatowverse player Rogen impregnates Katherine “Zyzzyx Road” Heigl after a one-night stand – looks to be the next entry in a CV of greatness.
Of course, advertising a movie like this is tough. Comedies don’t usually lend themselves to killer poster images (unless it’s a Ben Stiller CGI shitfest), so it’s interesting to see what the marketing team at Universal went with here. There’s the two shot of Heigl and Rogen, and then there’s the international sperm poster. Most interesting, though, is the one pictured here – it’s very much a recreation of the poster for The 40 Year Old Virgin, which was highly controversial in-house at the time. Would an image that was nothing more than a giant close-up of then-mostly-unknown Steve Carrell sell the movie? $100 million plus domestic says that it certainly didn’t hurt.
Knocked Up is coming in June. I am going to spend the next few months begging to see it early.