Discuss Marketing and Distribution in Thor 2.

Discuss marketing and distribution in Thor 2, also outlining anything interesting you have found.

The film, “Thor: The Dark World’ is distributed by Marvel Studios, Motion Pictures and Walt Disney Studios with a release date of October 30^th internationally and November 8^th for the US. Within it’s first week of being released, Thor: The Dark World topped the UK Box Office by making £8.6million through being released in 2D and 3D formats. Though the franchise has a huge following, not all the reviews were positive.

Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian labelled the film as a “CGI product of the Marvel Universe”. However, Chris Hewitt from Empire Magazine describes the film as “as confident and assured as its lead character, Marvel’s great run continues.”

A lot of the marketing for this film included the huge fan base the franchise has, due to the success of the film’s precessors, Thor and Avengers Assemble. This included actors from the film being flown to countries such as Korea, China and Australia for events such as premieres, Q+A’s and appearances.

Tom Hiddleston, who plays Thor’s brother Loki in the films, appeared at the majority of these events by meeting fans and doing Q+A’s. His most popular appearance promoting the film was when he stepped out on stage in front of 7,000 people at San Diego Comic Con in full costume and remained in character the whole time before debuting a trailer for the film. He also dressed in costume again for clips on Comedy Central where his character was having conversations with kids about Thor that would air before the tv spots.

Tom Hiddleston, along with Marvel Studios executive producer Kevin Fiege and Thor: The Dark World director Alan Taylor, did a podcast at the Apple Store in Regent Street where they were asked questions by fans and by Empire Magazine editor Chris Hewitt regarding the film.

The world premiere of Thor: The Dark World was held in Leicester Square in London on October 22^nd as majority of the film is set and was filmed in London. This allowed fans to turn up to try and get a glimpse of the stars of the film and meet other fans to talk about the film with.

Due to the huge fan base the franchise has, any time there is an event regarding the film; somebody will be talking about it on social networking sites, with Twitter and YouTube being the most popular sites. According to Box Office.com, Thor The Dark World receives around 5,000 tweets daily, even a week after it’s release in the UK.

The huge fan base of the franchise allows merchandise sales to rise.  Merchandise for the Thor films include dolls, figures, clothing and even a replica of Thor’s famous hammer.