Back in 2014, it was reported that the Chongqing based Wulong Karst Tourism group was threatening to sue Paramount over a missed product placement. The group made a deal with Paramount which involved their logo being shown on screen in exchange for a $750,000 payment toward the film’s production. Age of Extinction had a pivotal scene introducing the Dinobots being filmed in the Wulong Karst – and while this is prominently in the film, the logo’s placement was left on the cutting room floor. Because of this, the group – which has been making various legal noises between 2014 and now – is seeking $27million from Paramount and their Chinese partners. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this case is only now progressing through the courts in China, and a verdict has yet to be reached. We will update you when we have more information on this story.
Exodus
Just saying is that they're most likely laundering their $ into these types of things…
Ah ok, so 27 million CNY/RMB…thanks. Not as crazy as it sounds then for the dollar amount.
Hazekiah
Well, at least THESE guys get it!
And, yeah, I'll wear band shirts and Transformers shirts and stuff like that…but for the most part people PAYING GIANT COMPANIES to be walking billboards for their brands instead of it going the other way around cracks me up to no end, lol. Especially clothing labels.
"Hey, guys, here's a shirt that advertises my taste in shoes."
"Hey, guys, here's a shirt that advertises my taste in, um…shirts."
LOLWUT
>_>
Haywired
The product placement in TF movies is so in-your-face and heavy…
… that I missed it completely every single time.
When I see a glimpse of a real world product on screen I just assume they have simply the same products there.
Never was a big deal.
EagleTron
The ads in the transformers movie weren't overly standing out to me at all.
I agree with what Haze is saying, I haven't read his thread but I get the overall message.
And I say 27 mill for what. They act like it was a Comercial during the super bowl or something. It's not worth that much money.
In real life we are drilled overy and over every second by ads every where even to where look at someones smack in your face t-shirt ad or the cup you drink your soft drink from. Now the fact that any ads in movie have to be paid for takes the whole real life ad control( which is another whole world of a subject in itself) away. The only extremely few ads you see in movie are the only ones you see cause they paid for it. So to some people they poke out to much because less is more in that case. All and all, if they really wanted to get 27 million in profits they made the mistake of not getting a real commercial with hired actors or a big bill board in times Square nyc. I never ever left a movie and heard anyone mention something about what ads they saw or didn't see. They sure will say if the movie is good or bad or they might say over and over the Name of the kind of fancy sneakers they have on or the name of the night club they plan on going to later followed by how their Name of brand of car is the best and the coolest over and over.
Hazekiah
Off the top of my head, as an example found in most of the TF films, I think we see a Bud Light logo flicker on a video screen for about half-a-second in TF:RotF, Sam's mom casually drinks a Bud Light can for about 5 seconds before setting it down in TF:DotM, and there's funny gag involving a Bud Light delivery truck with a few seconds of footage of the labeled bottles strewn everywhere in TF:AoE.
Which brings us up to maybe 15 seconds of Bud Light product placement spread across about 7 and a half hours of film. Is that REALLY so excessive? Yet to hear people talk about it here you'd think everyone everywhere is drinking Bud Light all the time.
And have you EVER been in a crowded public space?
Because ads and logos for trademarked products are placed EVERYWHERE. Hell, downtown Chicago has MORE in real life than it does in these movies! And I don't think I've ever ventured downtown without seeing SCORES of beer delivery trucks. It only made sense after two movies of downtown shenanigans in Chicago that we'd have to see at least ONE eventually. Which we finally did! And it was funny and completely plausible that it would be there and that a stressed-out single father from Texas who's already established as enjoying a beer now and then would pick up a free cold one and take a swig in the middle of a hot Chicago summer afternoon during a break in the action.
I know I would! And I don't even like beer that much, lol.
Didn't take me out of the scene ONE BIT. If anything, it grounded it in reality for me.
And I'm sure Budweiser paid handsomely for the placement, which helps pay for more giant robots onscreen, so it's a WIN/WIN as far as I'm concerned.
None of the points I was making were specific to TF:AoE, they were in reference to the product placement in ALL of Bay's TF films. I just used my thread about the product placement in TF:DotM as a case in point since it's the movie which I've catalogued and researched the product placement within most extensively, and which explains how well it was handled by the set design and wardrobe crews, etc.
We all have hobbies, man…knock yourself out.
Ash from Carolina
Good product placement make you want something without really realizing why you want that thing. So if you leave the movie theater and go damn now I really want a Pepsi for some strange reason then the film did a great job selling you that product.
But when a product is so in your face that it pisses you off it is product placement fail. If characters go hey bro have a Pepsi and the Pepsi logo gets shoved in your face so often it felt like an overly long Pepsi commercial then instead of wanting to buy a Pepsi after the movie you are so mad at Pepsi you don't want one.
Product placement should never make you feel like ugh I'm so tired of that product.
Jus09
Honestly, I'd rather slam my face into a car door. It'd be more informative.
Rodimus Prime
That's about DotM, not AoE. Besides that, my point is not that PP is always bad, but that if a director cannot do it properly it takes people out of the movie. I, Robot and World War Z being two examples.
Chaos Muffin
Is Wulong secretly Kanye?
Hazekiah
ORLY?
You're SUPPOSED to notice product placement in movies just as much as in real life, that's kind of the point.
Especially in a movie that's basically product placement for its own toyline as much as the Transformers franchise in particular is inherently.
Especially when product placement helps pay for the superexpensive, titular characters.
And ESPECIALLY when the product placement itself is used to inform us about the characters, reinforce character traits, and communicate information to the audience in general anyway!
I wrote a thread about it, btw. Pretty neat stuff:
GAUGE
this story is just pathetic.
wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, my logo wasn't shown! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Newholl
That's very capitalist of the Chinese.
StrangePlanet
"So you spent 3/4 of a million dollars, and didn't get what you paid for?"
"Yes, your honor."
"And you'd like 27 million in compensation?"
"That's correct, your honor."
"………………….. Proceed."
Rodimus Prime
A good director will use product placement in a way that you won't notice too directly. Unfortunately, like many ear marks of a good director, this is beyond Bay's faculty.
Hollywood Hoist
This I'm sure isn't the first time a company feels they didn't get enough screen time for it's product placement deal. I wonder if there is anything written in the contract regarding editing.
Either way if Paramount didn't full fill their end of the contract, the company is entitled to some money, maybe not $27 million, but something.
UltraMagnus3786
I'm sure the figure will get reduced as initial estimates are always inflated by a lot. It will be hard to prove damages unless there was a damages provision in the contract. Still, they Chinese company should be able to recover a hefty sum since I'm sure this isn't their first rodeo in movies and they can probably prove damages with some modicum of certainty (i.e., after a local movie we generally see X% increase in profits, this was an international film so multiply X by Y, now pay us $Z).
Ash from Carolina
I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper for Paramount to just make some sort of settlement to keep everyone in China happy? Paramount hasn't exactly been burning up the box office domestically so they have gotten rather dependent on the Chinese market to help out their films.
At this point is seems like Paramount needs the Chinese market a lot more than the Chinese market needs Paramount. The Mermaid made $526 million in China so it's not like Chinese film makers aren't figuring out how to bring in the big bucks with the home market.
Chaos Prime
That's an excellent point. They did dodge a bullet.
Raiju
Or corn. Just like there's always carrots in vomit, there's somehow always corn in your turds even when you know you haven't eaten any recently.
Sadly, this is coming from a movieverse fan who at least found some varying degrees of enjoyment in the first three films but didn't like AoE at all.
EagleTron
lol
Did you even read some of the post by people to understand what I was saying?