Several weeks before Neon achieved a company-record $22.4m opening weekend with Osgood Perkins’s Longlegs, James A. Janisse and his wife Chelsea Rebecca sat down to watch the serial killer horror thriller in a theatre.
They were among the first to see the film starring Maika Monroe as an FBI agent and Nicolas Cage as the eponymous serial killer. And, to heighten the experience, they watched it alone – in stark contrast to the sold-out screenings that would eventually take place in some 2,500 theatres across North America last weekend.
Enlisting the support of social media influencers and digital creators like Janisse and Rebecca – who are better known to genre fans as Dead Meat and command more than six million followers on their YouTube channel – was an important part of Neon’s promotional efforts.
“It’s about a multi-faceted campaign,” says Neon chief distribution officer Elissa Federoff. “We had critics on board, others watch a trailer or see an ad and want to come, and some want a first-hand endorsement from somebody they follow or whose taste they like. That’s what an influencer and a digital creator will do.”
Neon acquired Longlegs at the 2023 EFM in Berlin – the film financed by Dave Caplan’s C2 is said to have cost less than $10m to make – and dated it eight or nine months out, in the kind of bold move more typically associated with a major studio. “Usually we’re picking up something up at festivals and moving quickly,” says Federoff.
Confidence in summer corridor
The July release slot demonstrated confidence in the summer corridor as a fruitful time to open a genre counter-programmer – and gave the team time to implement a carefully orchestrated promotional push that appealed to fans of horror and thrillers as well as devotees of the true crime procedural. (Longlegs is not based on a true story.)
They targeted influencers early and sent Janisse and Rebecca a birthday card invitation to see the film – the theme relates to the plot – that was written in code without any context. They loved it and ended up hosting a special screening for their followers in Anaheim, California, featuring a pre-show Q&A with Monroe.
By that stage Neon was nearly at the end of a deliciously cryptic campaign that the company says cost less than $10m in total. It began in January with three coded teasers one week apart and a theatrical trailer that ran with Universal’s horror release Night Swim.
Coded advertisements ran in local newspapers across the United States and in June Neon ran a half-page advertisement in The Seattle Times - the film takes place in the nearby state of Oregon – written in code with the legend ‘Printed at the request of Longlegs’ at the bottom. It led to The Birthday Murders website packed with chilling imagery and text relating to a series of killings.
That same month Neon booked a billboard that towered above the streets of Los Angeles and bore a phone number which, when dialled, triggered an eerie message spoken by Cage’s character. Neon says more than 930,000 people have dialled the number.
“People on Reddit were creating their own cipher alphabet for months to unlock the cipher,” Federoff says. “That’s the power of the audience to carry the film… The people who were so passionate about this film were leading the word of mouth; you could see that in the pre-sales.”
Hiding Nicolas Cage
In a critical element of the campaign, Neon deliberately chose not to reveal Longlegs in any marketing materials and hid Cage’s face, intensifying the sense of intrigue and must-see.
“We kept Cage under wraps and factored in the imagination of the viewer, which is the scariest thing,” Federoff notes. “We focused on Maika as the lead and played on the cat-and-mouse serial killer-cop dynamic.”
President of publicity Christina Zisa adds: “Very few filmmakers and producers with Nicolas Cage in a film would agree to a campaign where you don’t show him. They believed in us and took a huge leap of faith. That was the cornerstone of the campaign.” Federoff agrees. ”Oz [Perkins] and the producers were incredible partners from day one.”
Cage produced Longlegs through his Saturn Films, alongside Brian Kavanaugh-Jones of Range, Caplan, Chris Ferguson of Oddfellows Pictures, and Dan Kagan of Traffic. Ken Kao and Josh Rosenbaum of Waypoint are the release partners and Black Bear handles sales outside the United States.
In the end, hiding Longlegs worked out well. Neon put tickets on sale three weeks before the release when the norm is two weeks. ”We knew this was going to be big and our pre-sales were impressive,” Federoff says.
The film premiered at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on July 8. After initially tracking to open in the high single digits, Longlegs, which carries an 87% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, earned a Neon record $3m in Thursday night previews and $22.4m over its first three days.
That was good enough to deliver Cage’s biggest opening weekend since National Treasure back in 2004. On top of that it has delivered the best horror opening of the year to date, and is part of a select group of only 17 $20m-plus opening weekends by non-major studios including Lionsgate and Dimension since 1995.
Early data shows the Longlegs audience leaned towards male and filmgoers aged 25 and above. The 25-34 bracket was the biggest demographic and accounted for approximately 30% of the national audience.
Perkins’s genre hit over-indexed with the Latinx audience and its top markets included Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Denver.
Heading into the second weekend, Longlegs stands at more than $28.1m in North America and the Neon team will be looking for repeat viewings and strong word of mouth to entice new audiences and take box office even higher.
“This movie lends itself to repeat viewings like Seven,” Federoff notes. “You can’t get it all from the first viewing.”
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