Weaver remembers his simple instructions: “Barry Diller told us to create a poster that would blow Universal’s ‘Kong’ out of the water.” And they needed it now. Within moments of a court ruling that cleared the way for both studios to proceed, Paramount chairman of the board Barry Diller reached his vice-president of worldwide marketing, Gordon Weaver, in the first class lounge of British Airways he and the Paramount marketing group were about to fly to London to scrutinize films being produced there. In 1975, Paramount and Universal were locked in a long court battle over which studio ultimately had rights to produce a Kong remake. The image was created with impact in mind. It hung on my bedroom wall for the rest of the decade. Not really a gorilla, but sort of Yeti-like creature with a Phantom of the Opera skull-like nose. The face jumped right out at you-and it was one of those moments where guys simultaneously go “Whoooaa!” We were taken aback it was a quite surprising and quite frightening image. By happy accident, when you flipped it open you saw half of the poster: Kong revealed from the waist up, blonde captive in one hand and crushed fighter jet in the other. The poster was in the back of the magazine, folded twice. My friends Lonnie and Todd gathered in to share the experience. Tepley had just handed out the new book orders (remember how exciting book order day was?) and I couldn’t wait to see the giant gorilla. My first glimpse of the image-and I remember the moment very well-occurred in my 6th grade classroom as I unfolded the poster from the back of a brand new DYNAMITE magazine, the Scholastic School Book Club’s “hip” periodical. Remember, there was no internet in 1975 information and images did not disseminate with today’s lightning speed. Still, none of this filtered down to flyover country. Winerman was given some help eventually sixty thousand requests for the poster came in. On the third day, eight thousand letters showed up. Winerman was presented with a box containing 219 letters. Paramount assigned a single person, Christabel Winerman, to deal with the anticipated requests. Across the top of the image were the words “There still is only one King Kong”-a calculated stab-in-the-eye aimed at Universal, which had run their own Kong ad weeks before-and at the bottom was a coupon offering a free copy of the poster. On November 30, 1975-almost exactly thirty years ago-the New York Times printed an ad for a film that wouldn’t be released for over a year. The New York Times ad - America´s first glimpse of DeLaurentiis´s Kong A rock and a hard place, to be sure.īut, you know what? It doesn’t hold a candle to the impact made by the teaser poster for-get ready-the DeLaurentiis King Kong remake of 1976. It’s a fairly unconventional composition that creates a sense of tension Ann Darrow trapped between cold, reptilian savagery and the more ambiguous, for-now-quiet ferocity of Kong. This past month has given us our first peek at what could be considered a “teaser poster” for Peter Jackson’s King Kong, an evocative image that has predictably spurred discussion and debate on the boards. Kong is | King Kong movie news and rumors
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