Hey… remember back in the good old days when movie studios put together trailers for their movies so that…. you know…. people would watch them? That’s why they made them right?
I mean, studios would even pay HUGE amounts of money to have TV stations play those trailers… they’d pay movie theaters HUGE dollars to play the trailers… all so as many people as possible would see them and get awareness and buzz out about the movie in question. Yup… those were the good old days. I think it was just yesterday.
But TODAY is a new day. Today Paramount ushers in a new era. An era where they don’t want you to see the trailers. Case In Point:
Yesterday here on The Movie Blog we talked about the new JJ Abrams monster movie that right now goes by the code name “Cloverfield” and about the cool trailer they played before the Transformers. The trailer got put up on Youtube and so we posted it here. It’s a TRAILER right? An ADVERTISEMENT right? They want as many people as possible to see it RIGHT?!?!?! Oh I forgot… that was yesterday thinking… and today is a new day.
Late last night I get a note… from the frigging Paramount Legal Rep to tell me to take the thing down. This is a trailer we’re talking about right? An advertisement right? Am I missing something here?
This letter is being written to you on behalf of Paramount
Pictures Corporation (hereinafter “Paramount”). Paramount is the owner
of rights in and to the unreleased “Cloverfield” motion picture
(hereinafter referred to as “Paramount Property”). No one is authorized
to copy, reproduce, distribute, or otherwise use Paramount Property
without the express written permission of Paramount.It has been brought to our attention that the website located at
“https://www.themovieblog.com/” for which you are the service provider is
distributing, displaying, and reproducing, unauthorized copies of the
Paramount Property. The specific URL from which this unauthorized copy
is being distributed, displayed and reproduced is:https://www.themovieblog.com/archives/2007/07/cloverfield_trailer.html
Look… Paramount is TOTALLY within their rights to request the stuff get taken down. It’s their stuff, and they can ask it to be removed. Totally within their rights. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But just because I’m ALLOWED to stick my privates in a termite den… doesn’t mean it’s smart.
As i side note, I FUCKING HATE getting letters from legal departments. If you have something to say or ask me… FUCKING DO IT YOURSELF. Don’t get your bloody legal department to do it. Get a PR person or someone working in publicity to send me a quick note. Getting letters from a bloody lawyer really bugs me. (Can you tell I’m not in a good mood today?)
So fuck it. No more Cloverfield trailer talk. Don’t want to risk getting another letter from the old Legal department.
