Marvel Studios Explains Its Rebranding of ‘Thunderbolts*’

In an unprecedented marketing move, Marvel Studios rebranded its latest feature film, Thunderbolts*, after its opening weekend. Taking advantage of the buzz around the “mysterious asterisk” that was added to the film’s title just over one year ago, the studio revealed that the symbol references the team becoming The New Avengers in the final act and rebranded the film as *The New Avengers.

Marvel blitzed social media with new posters and videos of members of the cast revealing the movie’s “new title”, including Sebastian Stan walking around Los Angeles covering up Thunderbolts* posters with *The New Avengers ones. The savvy move has already stirred up increased conversation around the film, potentially propelling it to a very solid second weekend at the box office, especially considering the overwhelmingly positive reviews it’s received. Now, the studio has begun to address some of the questions that have popped up due to the move.

Changing the title of a film after release isn’t groundbreaking but changing it four days after release might have been…had they officially changed it. Following the online uproar, Gizmodo and io9 reporter Germain Lussier shared word from his Marvel source that the rebrand is simply a “marketing gimmick” and that thenfilm’s official title remains Thunderbolts*.

In an interview with the New York Times, director Jake Schreier explained the logic behind the gimmick. “It felt like, if Val is also trying to pull a switcheroo and sell the New Avengers to the world, we could do that, too,” he said. “Especially given that the asterisk has been on the movie for a year, hopefully it doesn’t feel sweaty — it feels like this was a plan and we built up to it,” he explained, referring to the addition of the symbol which was first revealed in a behind the scenes look at the film shared by star Florence Pugh.

Schreier added that while Marvel was open to the addition of the asterisk, they always assumed its meaning would leak ahead of the film’s release. “It’s very fun [Marvel was]open to embracing that,’ said Schreie. “It’s so interesting in this world, and Kevin [Feige] talks about it sometimes, where sometimes they wanted things to leak and they don’t. I think we all assumed that it would be a bigger part of the conversation already, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.” Interestingly, the information did indeed “leak” well ahead of the film’s premier but apparently not loudly enough to catch the attention of the fine security folks at Marvel Studios. Now all that remains to be seen is what impact it has on the film’s box office performance both this week and over the long haul.

Marvel Studios Thunderbolts* and/or *The New Avengers is now in theaters.

Source: NY Times