“Let’s Be Cops,” is the buddy comedy movie starring Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson. In the film two misfit friends decide to don LAPD uniforms and impersonate policemen. While pretending to be officers they get into a few comedic situations including chasing a 250-pound naked man and being mistaken as strippers. The film hit movie theaters August 13, 2014. Nothing too unusual about that right? Just Hollywood being Hollywood.
However, on August 9, 2014 18-year-old Michael Brown an unarmed African-American man was shot six times in the back by Officer Darren Wilson. The young man’s death sparked civil unrest and protests throughout Ferguson, Missouri and heated debate throughout the country.
A similar situation occurred two years earlier. This time the movie was called “The Watch.” The film starred Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade, and Vince Vaughn as a ragtag band of neighborhood watch members. The characters found themselves in a faceoff with flesh thieving aliens. The film was released on July 27, 2012. Four months earlier on February 26, 2012 17-year-old African American high school student, Treyvon Martin, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch member.
“The Watch,” originally called “Neighborhood Watch,” had already began its marketing campaign when the Martin shooting hit national headlines. The initial teasers for the film did not divulge the alien plot. In fact, they featured the lead characters being overly macho with Jonah Hill mock shooting at teenagers with his hand. “The Watch’s” first poster showed a dark nefarious figure riddled with bullet holes with the words Neighborhood Watch prominently printed.
Original Poster – “Neighborhood Watch” – Prior to Martin shooting
After the shooting, the film’s studio 20th Century Fox changed the campaign from focusing on the faux bravado of the characters to highlighting the comedic characteristics of the actors. Although the marketers spent 10s of millions of dollars on the campaign they pulled teaser trailers from theaters. The posters and the name of the film were also revamped. The studio had the option of pushing the release date of the film until the country’s tension subsided, but the July date remained the same. “The Watch” had a budget of an estimated $68 million dollars; on its opening weekend it made just over $12 million dollars. The film is ranked 97 as one of the worst openings in movie history. It would finally gross $35 million dollars, only making less than half of its budget back.
“Let’s Be Cops” had a budget of an estimated $17 million dollars; on its opening weekend it made just over $17 million dollars. But, it would finally gross $82 million dollars total. Even though the movie performed well there was a tremendous dip in the attendance of an African-American audience. Usually there is a higher percentage of that audience segment for a bona fide hit movie. “Let’s Be Cops” also had no true challenge in its opening weekend. The two films, “Expendables 3” and “The Giver” were already running in theaters at the time.
Both of these films suffered from bad timing, but “Let’s Be Cops” never had the ambiguous or ambitious marketing campaign “The Watch” tried to begin with. Buzz was generated for “Let’s Be Cops” via word-of-mouth. The images and trailer were far more straightforward then “The Watch’s.” The posters showed Wayans and Johnson acting like goofballs, which helped convey the message this movie is a comedy, not a film to be taken seriously. Although, the film was screened sporadically there were no traditional press screenings, therefore there were no media reviews for audiences to read. Most, importantly there were no underlying dark mysterious undertones mirroring tragic coincidences with the “Let’s Be Cops” rollout campaign.
Sources:
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/03/28/fox-removes-neighborhood-watch-trailers
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/movies/bad-timing-for-a-comedy-called-neighborhood-watch.html?_r=0
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=neighborhoodwatch.htm