Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
For the upcoming 2005 remake of The Bad News Bears, Paramount went with an interesting illustration of Billy Bob Thornton and the rest of the Bears Little League baseball team for the new Bad News Bears poster. We say interesting, because: A. film studios rarely use traditional illustrations as a one-sheet anymore, and B. the new Bad News Bears movie poster is in itself a remake of the original 1976 Bad News Bears one-sheet.
Jack Davis is a well-known illustrator and cartoonist, who influenced generations (beginning in the 1950s) with his work in a number of varied outlets, including Mad Magazine, Tales From The Crypt horror comic books, and even Time magazine. His distinct and humorous style of cartooning is easily one of the most copied styles of cartoon illustration, even to this day.
Davis had a long career illustrating movie posters, which brings us to his cartoon one-sheet for the Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal comedy. Davis did a great job in his caricatures of the films players, especially of Matthau — the one-sheet’s cartoon style fit the tone of the film perfectly.
As for the Billy Bob Thornton poster remake, we can only wonder what approval process gauntlet this artwork went through, so it’s hard to knock any occasion when a studio uses the near-extinct animal known as movie poster illustration. It is an interesting choice in that the new poster is patterned so closely (at least in layout and concept) after the original Davis art. (We’re still trying to find out the identity of illustrator of the new Bears poster, so let us know if you have any ideas.)
Update: We just found out that artist Phil Roberts did the illustration for the new Bad News Bears poster. (Thanks for the info, James!)
Here is a look at the final domestic one-sheet for Tim Burton’s upcoming film Charlie and the Choclate Factory. Johnny Depp stars as mysterious and eccentric candy maker Willy Wonka, in this update of the classic film (and children’s book) Willy Wonka and the Choclate Factory.
It’s interesting to note the poster is using a “gallery”, which is a series of small photos of the film’s costars. The gallery as a movie poster device was popular in the 1970s, especially on posters for star-studded disaster films. Disaster films aside, the gallery in this case highlights the popular children’s characters in the Wonka film: Mike TeaVee, Augustus Gloop, Charlie Bucket, Violet Beauregarde, and Veruca Salt.
In 1992, famed Czech photographer Tono Stano (NSFW) produced an arresting black and white photograph entitled “Sense”. Stano is famous for posing models into suggestive shapes and symbols in his photography. Two years later, Stano’s “Sense” photograph was used in the book cover design for the photography book The Body: Photographs of the Human Form by William A. Ewing. The Stano “Sense” image was cropped slightly on the top for the Ewing book cover design, which made the photograph an even more abstract and effective visual shape.
MGM’s marketing department liked the image too, so they utilized the very same concept for the one-sheet for the infamous 1995 Paul Verhoven film Showgirls. To be clear, MGM acquired licensing to use Tony Stano’s image for it’s Showgirls key art campaign, but it makes one wonder if the licensing became an afterthought of the poster’s release. A home video release of the poster art removed the original cropping of the photo (making it even closer to the original photograph), while an even more recent DVD release dropped the Stano inspired artwork altogether.
In 1992, Tim Burton was set to release his sequel to his smash 1989 film Batman. Like most summer blockbuster films, Warner Bros. released a teaser poster for Batman Returns several months in advance. The initial advance poster featured a close crop of a black and white image of the Batman logo “ears” with the word “RETURNS” underneath. The iconic look was interesting to say the least, and surprisingly artistic for a big budget studio film poster. Just one problem: movie theater owners absolutely hated the Batman Returns teaser poster design — and made this clear to the higher ups inside Warner Bros. marketing and exhibitor relations. Faster than you can say “Holy Revision Batman!” a replacement teaser poster with a more conventional version of the Batman logo filled theater lobbies everywhere.
One of my favorite poster illustrators is famed artist John Alvin. Alvin is responsible for some of the most famous pieces of film poster art, including memorable one-sheets for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the Star Wars trilogy. But his most striking work (and our site’s mastehead inspiration) is his one-sheet poster illustration for the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Surprisingly, Alvin was never completely satisified with his original poster art for the Ridley Scott film, and set out to revise and redo his original Blade Runner artwork in the year 2000. Alvin, speaking about revisiting past projects: “But in the same sense, a chance for the artist, in this case myself, to go back and recreate something that I always liked but wanted to do it a little differently at the time and circumstances didn’t permit.” Here is a Blade Runner poster comparison of the two versions of the artwork. Which version of the poster do you prefer?
