Honest Abe doesn’t look like a person you’d particularly want to mess with in the new poster for “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, the forthcoming period monster film starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Coooper, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anthony Mackie and Rufus Sewell that’s based on the bestselling book by Seth Grahame-Smith (the author who also wrote “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, a mash-up novel whose own film adaptation is currently stuck in development hell).
The one-sheet essentially follows the simplistic M.O. of the first two posters (which were released awhile back and one of which I’ve embedded below for comparison purposes), and while its “reimagining” of the famed Lincoln Memorial is clever enough I guess, it pales somewhat next to its far-moodier and more evocative predecessors.
That said, all three posters actually highlight a larger problem with the film’s ad campaign thus far: Fox’s too-narrow focus on marketing the film’s one-joke premise. Particularly for people who aren’t familiar with the book, doing so could actually deter them from seeing the movie. Indeed, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the concept (a.k.a. the title of the movie itself) essentially makes it sound like a $70 million “SNL” skit stretched out to feature length.
Going forward the studio may want to take a more imaginative overall marketing approach that doesn’t rest so completely on the easy-sell central idea. It’ll be interesting to see if they change course with the as-yet-unreleased trailer, but in my opinion the posters (particularly this new one) just feel lazy.
My grade for the second poster: C. Check it out below and then rate it for yourself at top left!
One of the two original (very similar) posters:
“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is scheduled for release on June 22nd.