'Borderline false advertising': Disney sells Hexed with a style the movie doesn't have
The new Hexed poster is the best-looking thing the marketing has produced. The problem is which movie it's advertising.
Disney unveiled a new Hexed poster on October 12: Billie in a crimson hooded cape, glowing orb in hand, whimsical towers under a crescent moon, a bubbling cauldron and an open spellbook in the foreground. It's rendered as a flat, hand-drawn storybook illustration — and the film itself, out November 25, is standard Walt Disney Animation CG.
The gap did not go unnoticed. On r/movies, the most-echoed reaction was that the advertising beats the product:
"Funny enough, this 2D art style on the poster actually looks more interesting than the boring run of the mill 3D they used for the full movie."
— a commenter on r/movies
Illustrated one-sheets are an old and honorable tradition; nobody accused Star Wars posters of lying about being paintings. The redditors' point is that animation is different, because in an animated film the visual style is the product:
"For an animated movie this is borderline false advertising. If this was all I saw of the marketing, I would reasonably go into the movie expecting it to look like this."
— a commenter on r/movies
The confidence problem
Look at what else is on that poster. The credit line bills the film as coming "from the studio behind Frozen and Zootopia" — so the one-sheet for Disney's new original is selling a drawing style the movie doesn't use and two titles the movie isn't.
That matters because of where Hexed sits. It's Disney Animation's first original since Wish, it's landing in the same Thanksgiving slot where Wish and Strange World both lost money, and it's following Zootopia 2's record $556 million global opening in that corridor. An original in this position needs marketing that sells what the film actually is.
The Hexed poster advertises a 2D style the film doesn't have and two hit titles the film isn't. The movie it's selling opens November 25.
The bet Disney is making
To be fair to the marketing team, there's a defensible read: the poster is targeting the Ghibli-literate, Nimona-poster-reblogging audience that a generic CG key art would never reach, and a beautiful lie that gets someone into a seat is an old studio trick. Trailers have been carrying the film's real look since June, so nobody who's paying attention is actually deceived.
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But the r/movies thread is what paying attention looks like, and its verdict is that the fake version is the one people want. When your audience likes the poster more than the footage, that's data — the kind Disney will be reading in box office form over Thanksgiving weekend.
Previously we wrote: Clayface first reviews: 'freakishly awesome', 'shockingly gruesome' — and you need zero DC homework to enjoy it