Spectre opens with an incredible shot of Daniel Craig, as James Bond, pursuing a villain through a Día de Muertos parade in Mexico City. The parade actually never existed before the film, but it was so popular that it prompted locals to put on their own real life version – it has been running annually ever since.
Uber may never have existed without James Bond. In Casino Royale, Bond tracks down Le Chiffre through a Sony Ericsson phone. The phone seems highly outdated by today’s standards, but it allowed Bond to see the location of his car update in real-time – an image that stuck with Uber co-founder Garrett Camp.
Jason Blum is the man behind the scariest – and most profitable – horror movies in the last two decades, like Paranormal Activity, Split, and Get Out. He actively talks about the importance of budget constraints in creating thrills; using a single home location where characters are most vulnerable, and casting silent extras because they are paid more if they talk.
The reason the monster is kept hidden for most of the film isn’t artistic expression – it’s because the mechanical shark stopped working during filming. But as director Steven Spielberg says: “I think the shark not working when we needed it to probably added $175 million to the box office, because what’s scary about the movie is the unseen, not what we see.”
In one of Mad Men’s most famous scenes, Don Draper pitches an idea for an ad about ketchup: there is no product, just the tagline “Pass the Heinz”. In 2017, Heinz turned this fictitious campaign into a reality, creating three printed posters of classic American food (fries, burgers and steaks), without the picture of the product, the familiar colours of the brand, or anything else that could remind to anyone what the ad was really about. Anything except for the phrase “Pass the Heinz”.
It is one of the most successful video games of all time, but its cover players aren’t so lucky. Of the 22 players who have been selected to grace the cover of Madden games, 16 have had troubling or abruptly shortened seasons following their cover debut. It may be a curious coincidence, but it hasn’t stopped fans protesting against their favourite players appearing on the cover.
The design of Mario was the result of one big constraint. His creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, was limited by low quality hardware, so he made the character as simple as possible; clothing him in red overalls and a blue shirt for contrast, using a cap to avoid drawing the character’s hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, and drawing a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need for a mouth and facial expressions.
Monopoly released a new ‘simplified’ version of the game, where a mobile app handles all transactions and removes the need for a banker or physical money. Sure, players will find it easier to pay, and harder to cheat, but in the words of one journalist: “it is nowhere near as tantalising as the prospect of flaunting piles of pink and orange notes in a delicious victory over your competitive mother.” Plus, as any regular player will know, a bit of fraud is part of the fun.
By the time of Monty Python’s 25th anniversary, author George Perry wrote that “the five surviving members had with the passing years begun to occupy an institutional position in the edifice of British social culture that they had once had so much fun trying to demolish.”
People like to think they have sophisticated taste in movies, but as Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos puts it, “they just want a movie that they love.” Maestro, with its seven Oscar nominations, couldn’t get it into the top ten most-watched films on Netflix last Christmas: viewers preferred Zack Snyder’s space opera Rebel Moon and the arrival of the 1990 classic Pretty Woman on the service.
Netflix now charges £4.99 a month for weekly shows with ad breaks. Sound familiar?
Oscar winners are becoming less successful at the box office. In other words, a growing gap between what critics rate and what audiences want to watch. Reminiscent of advertising?
It was unlike any other sitcom before or since: largely shot in the first person and voiced by an inner monologue. The creators nicked this idea from something completely different: a documentary about the model Caprice Bourret called Being Caprice.
In 1994, an American health organisation caused popcorn sales to plummet by 50%. A study had shown that a medium bag of popcorn contained 37 grams of saturated fat, so the organisation turned this abstract number into a terrifying reality; the same amount of fat as six Big Macs.
After the Queen’s Gambit began ruling the Netflix charts in late 2020, Chess.com saw a 400% rise in registrations immediately, while US sales of chess sets on eBay soared by 60%.