The fever pitch of fan obsessiveness has reached a weird high these days. While it’s one thing to see set photos, on some sites fans will post pictures of trailers and trucks simply involved in the production even when nothing is happening. And when an image does manage to be snapped (usually from far away, out of context, unfinished, from a horrible perspective) of an actor in costume for whatever superhero movie or franchise they’re making, it will be scrutinized to death as if it were the final version of what’s going on the big screen. But all press is good press, right?
That seems to be thinking from the folks at Sony. Way back in the fall of 2012, the first images from the set of “RoboCop” appeared online, showing off the shiny new black suit and prompting many comments about the direction the remake was taking. And according to Gary Oldman, that’s exactly what the studio wanted. “We set that up. We leaked those pictures. That was absolutely a staged photoshoot,” Oldman told Yahoo.
“What happens is, you’ll get someone who will leak pictures, so it’s going to happen anyway,” Oldman continued. “So, take a ‘paparazzi shot’, but at least of the suit at an angle that you like, so you can ‘leak’ your picture first, and have some control over it.”
It’s a particularly interesting revelation. Certainly, we’ve seen filmmakers take the initiative early on in productions to share production photos with fans (Bryan Singer and Marc Webb in particular) and it seems studios are now accepting they need to play the game as well.
What do you think? Is this a clever deception on behalf of the studios or is it just encouraging speculation that ultimately has no bearing on the final movie? Let us know below. “RoboCop” opens on February 12th. Here’s our review. [via Reddit]
It's not a bad idea, but why pretend it's paparazzi shots at all?
They could have done like The Dark Knight Rises, releasing HQ photos of the characters (Bane and Selina Kyle) before shooting outdoors.