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The movie's title also doubled as a description of theaters this weekend

Kim Hollis: And finally, Ghost Town, the impeccably reviewed Ricky Gervais comedy, managed $5.2 million in 1,505 venues. Why do you think Paramount's marketing failed on this one?

Daron Aldridge: I know that I am not alone with the praise for Gervais' previous work, but this one came across as fairly bland. Obviously, the reviews are showing that isn't the case with the end product but it didn't translate enough to get people in theaters opening weekend. Maybe with the support of critics, Paramount will give it some expansion and start touting its critical praise. That would require that they haven't already abandoned hope for the movie.

Jason Lee: Personally, I think British humor is hard to sell to American audiences. Sure Benny Hill cracked our market but that's only because he moved really, really fast.

Sean Collier: Don't tell Judd Apatow, but it hasn't been a good year for comedy. Of the ten highest grossing films to date this year, the only true adult comedy is Sex and the City. Expand that to a top 20, and you can bring in Get Smart, Tropic Thunder, Step Brothers, and (sigh) You Don't Mess With the Zohan - four star-driven films. Well-reviewed or not, most comedies without a big name are finding more meager audiences in 2008 - the best Ghost Town can hope for is to stick around for a while as a sleeper hit. All this, by the way, is likely bad news for How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

Scott Lumley: Despite how talented he is, Gervais is far from a household name. Also, the commercials looked mildly funny, but not hysterically so. The trailers that were attached to feature releases were a lot funnier and did a lot better job of establishing what was going on in this film. The 30 second spots on TV have not done as good a job, and are actually pretty badly disjointed. This may yet do some business due to its excellent reviews and word-of-mouth, but it looks like the ball got dropped somewhere.

Pete Kilmer: I'm a fan of Ricky, but I could have cared less about this. If this is something that is trying to Americanize him, then it failed. If he wants to crack the American movie market, he needs to continue in supporting roles in Ben Stiller films and get hooked up with the Apatow crew. Since most of American does not have BBC America or HBO at home, no one knows who he is. Which is a shame.

Les Winan: You know, I'm a huge Gervais fan (I've watched and re-watched The Office and Extras, I read his blog, I've listened to all the podcasts), but the ads for this movie made me not want to see it. Every ad and trailer that I saw for Ghost Town failed to show Gervais being funny, which I would have assumed was the point of the film in the first place.





David Mumpower: I completely agree with Les. I am not the biggest fan of Gervais, but I had been inclined to give this movie a chance. Then, I saw the trailer. There was a much better chance of me seeing the movie before I watched an ad for it. There is no bigger indictment of marketing than that. When the reviews came in and were glowing, I was absolutely mystified. How can a paid professional not better encapsulate a quality movie? And why didn't the studio show more support than a 1,500 venue release plan? This release has been betrayed every step of the way.

Max Braden: It just looked pedestrian. That said, I saw it tonight and enjoyed it. I'm sure it will be more successful in its DVD release.

Shane Jenkins: I'm still planning to see this, but I agree that marketing dropped the ball. The trailers they produced seemed designed to appeal to non-fans of Gervais. I think that approach failed, and they also managed to turn off his core crowd. The movie itself has to be better than the commercials, right?

Reagen Sulewski: Has there ever been a successful ghost comedy that didn't have the word "busters" in the title? Why do people keep returning to this idea?

Kevin Chen: Well, there was "Ghost".

Reagen Sulewski: You know as well as I do that all of Whoopi Goldberg's films were reclassified as "not funny" in the It Never Happened Act of 2002.

Shane Jenkins: I hear she's in negotiations for something called "Crisis in Generictown."

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