The Super Bowl is watched annually by over 100 million people. So it’s a prime opportunity for Hollywood to showcase previews of some of the biggest, most anticipated movies of the year.
The Silver Screen dominated the hours leading up to kick-off: Kevin Costner’s football drama “Draft Day” was a natural choice and the film has great potential. Costner’s other movie, the action film “3 Days to Kill” still doesn’t look promising. George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” (opening Friday) has been getting mixed buzz, but I’m still holding out hope. And it was surprising to see director Seth MacFarlane and the loveable bear TED announce that a teaser for MacFarlane’s upcoming “A Million Ways to Die in the West” couldn’t be shown on TV because it’s so adult. So they sent everyone to their website instead.
FOX’s final installment of their pre-game analysis marathon was sponsored by and named the “Muppets Most Wanted” Pre-Game Show, as Disney premiered two new spots for the musical sequel, out March 21st. The gang came back later for two fun Toyota ads, including one with Terry Crews
In the 6:00 Ford Pre-Kick slot we got a look at “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and Russell Crowe’s “Noah”, which promises to tell “the untold story” of the flood of Biblical proportions. I still don’t know how that’s possible, but we’ll see!
Now to the actual game, and what a way to start! The first play safety made Super Bowl history and pretty soon it was 5-0 Seahawks. Then came the Mouse House’s third film push of the night – “Need for Speed”, which simply looks like a “Fast & Furious” knock-off.
Quarter 2 featured the first look at Michael Bay’s re-vamped “Transformers: Age of Extinction” (set for June 27 release). While the action-sequence style looks similar to the other films, Mark Wahlberg is a major upgrade over Shia LaBeouf.
Once the score became 22-0 in favor of the Seahawks (an ineviable blowout), Spidey swung into action. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” already looks 5x better than the 2012 reboot.
And that ended the night for movie promos, and for most of the viewers watching the game, switching over to “Shark Tank” and other programming. Hopefully all of these releases will have been worth the up-to $4 million spent by the studios.