Chapter 62: Requirements for the Score
"Let's hear it, Duke."
Charles Roven gestured for him to continue. After all, Duke making a suggestion was one thing; whether Warner would adopt it was another.
"The Super Bowl halftime commercials!" Duke said quickly. "Put a thirty-second teaser trailer for the film in the Super Bowl halftime show. It's the highest-rated broadcast in the country. The promotional impact..."
"That would be a massive marketing expense," Charles Roven interrupted. "A thirty-second spot costs a full million dollars!"
"But over fifty million people across the country would see the trailer!" Duke replied.
Super Bowl commercial breaks were about more than just the ads themselves. Since the mid-eighties, companies wanting a slot had been producing dedicated short films specifically for the game. These commercials gathered the best concepts, the most dazzling visuals, and the biggest stars and models. Even viewers with no interest in the Super Bowl itself would switch over during halftime just to watch the blockbuster ads and the halftime show.
Because of this, the Super Bowl was an event with bizarre viewership patterns: the ratings during halftime often exceeded those of the game itself.
Naturally, the ad rates were astronomical. In the final years of his past life, Duke had paid a little attention to it: back then, a single second of airtime demanded a hundred thousand dollars. A thirty-second ad required at least three million, and it had become the norm for major films to advertise there.
As Charles Roven mentioned the Super Bowl, memories that had slowly faded over time trickled back into Duke's mind. If he remembered correctly, in this era of lower marketing budgets, no film had yet advertised during the Super Bowl. The first person to eat a crab seemed to be Independence Day. That blockbuster had a global marketing budget of only twenty-four million dollars—a figure absolutely unimaginable in the future.