AND FROM THE MOVIE STUDIO THAT IS ONE BIG ICEBERG

To recap, yesterday Fox started giving out free tickets to a 16-minute advertisement for James Cameron’s Avatar (teaser trailer below).  Since this was Fox (yeah that Fox, and that one and that one), take a guess how it went:

Fans seeking free tickets to a sneak-peek at the 3D sci-fi adventure “Avatar” have crashed the Web site for the upcoming James Cameron film.  Visitors to the site Monday who clicked to get tickets to a free 15-minute preview scheduled for Friday instead got an error message.  A representative for 20th Century Fox said the site was being repaired. [Yahoo]

And more details, from THR:

Ticket ordering was scheduled to begin online at noon PDT, but at about 11:55 a.m., the site started experiencing difficulties. About 17,000 of the 68,000 available tickets were distributed before the heavy traffic forced the site down for several hours.

You may have outdone yourself this time, Fox.  Wait, I spoke too soon:

THR continues:

Fox is counting on the cachet of Cameron and its advertising and promotion to drive licensing and merchandising beginning more than two months before the movie’s release. [...]
Mattel begins shipping 28 toys to stories in early October and expects them to be on store shelves at Wal-Mart, Target and other retailers by early November.
“We’re going to be pulling all the levers to make sure these are marketed properly,” Mattel spokesman Chris Volk said.
“We were aware the toys would be out six weeks before the movie opens, but luckily we have Jim Cameron’s name, which speaks for itself and has its own following,” Fox vp licensing Virginia King added.
Lora Cohn, another vp licensing at the studio, said: “The code name for this project was 8-80, which we even use on some T-shirts, which meant that it will appeal to everyone from eight to 80.”

Yes, why just the other day my 8-year-old nephew was talking about James Cameron’s oeuvre.  By the way, Cameron’s last movie was Titanic, which was rated PG-13 and came out four years before my nephew was born. But clearly the name “Jim Cameron” couldn’t appeal to 8-year-olds more unless it were airbrushed onto a rape free candy van.

WARNING: Filmdrunkard Charlie Br0nze says: “Whoa. There’s a NSFW link as soon as that non-teaser finishes. I nearly got Hustla’d.” Proceed with caution, y’all.

~ robopanda [teaser trailer via ontheflix]