Together with
The Future. Paramount pulled out the think-outside-the-box playbook for marketing its remake of Mean Girls, putting the movie up on TikTok in celebration of Mean Girls Day (a national holiday as far as TFP is concerned). With the remake slated for release on January 12th, Paramount may be testing whether re-introducing audiences to older IP in the form of ready-to-go viral clips can drum up demand for new versions.
Cinema, clipped
Paramount put up the entirety of the 2004 hit Mean Girls on TikTok… in 23 parts.
- The plan isn’t just to go viral (the account has already amassed 129,800 followers and the movie was the top trending topic on Twitter) but also ease people into rewatching the whole movie (classic endless scroll).
- The hope is Mean Girls reaches a new generation of audiences (because the movie really is timeless) right where they’re already watching movies.
Virality on TikTok is increasingly proving to be a good indicator if a movie will make a splash at the box office, so studios like Paramount are hoping to reverse-engineer a little online love. The Mean Girls remake scored so well in test screenings that it moved from a Paramount+ debut to a theatrical one. The studio clearly has high hopes.
And while some writers, directors, and actors bristled that Paramount may be using a TikTok exhibition as a way to circumvent residual payments, WGA board member Angelina Burnett says that’s simply not the case — the payouts from TikTok are just too small to be meaningful to a Hollywood studio. The movie is also on Paramount+ and free with ads on YouTube.
Some things really are just marketing.
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