The one thing about Hollywood that’s always irritated Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie might be one of Hollywood’s most prominent leading stars, having earned three Oscar nominations during her career, and of course, starring in the cultural phenomenon that was Barbie, but she gets up to a lot more than that.
I don’t know how she finds the time, but Robbie also co-runs LuckyChap Entertainment, a production company predominantly specialising in female-centric movies. Giving female filmmakers the chance to tell their stories, the company has produced everything from Promising Young Woman to Barbie, although not all of their productions feature the actor.
One of the company’s most successful productions not to feature Robbie was Saltburn, the controversial Emerald Fennell-directed movie that had audiences firmly divided. Some people were shocked by scenes such as Barry Keoghan licking up Jacob Elordi’s used cum-infested bathwater, while others could see straight through the filmmaker’s lazy attempts to shock.
Regardless, the film got people talking, and it proved to be a success for Robbie. Yet, the process of marketing the movie really made the actor realise how much she hates one aspect of Hollywood, seeing it as an unavoidable yet necessary evil – marketing.
While cinema, at its core, is an art form, it’s also a business, and movies need to sell tickets before anything else. Hollywood’s not exactly a cheap industry and profit is king, so one of the most important elements of making a movie is actually figuring out how to market it to shift as many admissions as possible.
Robbie told Variety, “Marketing is very uncharted territory in so many ways that everyone is kind of learning together. And sometimes what you don’t know is a wonderful gift. In the marketing of Saltburn, I was like, ‘Why are we doing a 30-second teaser trailer? Why can’t we do something called ‘tasters,’ and it can be seven to 10 seconds?’ And everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that then. If it works, cool, and if it doesn’t …’”
The thing that Robbie hates most about marketing is the way that so many trailers just give everything away. It destroys the excitement of watching a film and not knowing what’s going to happen, because you’re constantly waiting for that moment you saw in the trailer. Perhaps a scene in the trailer will help you connect the dots while you’re watching the movie, accidentally spoiling it in the process.
“There’s got to be an element of mystery. I hate trailers that have the whole movie condensed to two minutes. Everyone’s like, ‘It tested really high.’ Of course it did; you gave someone the whole movie,” Robbie added.
So, when it came to advertising Saltburn, Robbie tried to ensure that nothing was given away, even if it meant making rather short teaser clips. “Marketing an Emerald Fennell movie is tricky because she is the queen of plot twists, so all the greatest things, you can’t actually show. Because then it wouldn’t be so exciting when you see it in the movie,” the actor said.
Hollywood certainly has a habit of giving too much away, so Robbie is trying to do all she can to fight back against the industry’s disappointing methods of marketing. You’ve got to keep people guessing, after all.
