Space for a spud: The Martian offers to post filmgoers a free potato
|
Version 0 of 1. As movie marketing campaigns go it is not quite up there with Godzilla’s (1998 version) crushed cars in central London, The Simpsons Movie’s bid to transform thousands of local convenience stores into Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart, or Chronicle’s flying-people-shaped drones. But 20th Century Fox’s offer to send US fans of Ridley Scott space thriller The Martian their very own potato has to be one of the most surreal. The studio has joined up with US company Mail a Spud to offer fans the chance to send themselves, or anyone they know, a potato to celebrate the debut of its new release in US cinemas this weekend. The Martian stars Matt Damon as an astronaut left behind after a mission to the red planet goes terribly wrong. With no way to let his comrades on Earth know that he is still alive, he must find a way to survive for years on rations only meant to last for the short duration of the original mission. Without wishing to reveal too much of the plot, it is thought the potato offer is a reference to the eventual solution reached by Damon’s character Mark Watney, a botanist who must cultivate vegetables to survive. The Martian arrives in cinemas at a time when big-budget Hollywood space drama is experiencing a revival, after the blockbuster success of Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Gravity in 2013 and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar last year. Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt will star in the $150m (£99m)-budgeted Passengers as interstellar travellers who awake from cryogenic sleep almost a century too early and embark on a romance, while Robert Pattinson will take the lead role of an astronaut operating beyond the solar system in an untitled science-fiction film from novelist-turned-screenwriter Zadie Smith and French director Claire Denis. Tom Cruise is also due to reunite with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman on a new science-fiction movie, Luna Park, which centres on a group of renegade space scientists vying to secure a power source on the moon. Related: The Martian review – Matt Damon thanks his lucky stars in sci-fi test of survival According to Variety, The Martian is outselling Gravity in presales and might snatch the October US box office opening record of $55.8m – though it is more likely to come in at a still-impressive $45m. Scott’s film debuted in the UK on 1 October. The free-potato offer is open to the first 1,000 people who sign up through Mail a Spud’s website; the company will subsequently charge $9.99 per potato. The campaign is only running in the US. In any case, Mail a Spud warns that those planning to eat their potato once it arrives should exercise caution. “We do not recommend you consume the potato after it has travelled across the country inside of trucks, planes, and postal service bags,” the site’s FAQ pronounces. “It has touched a lot of germs by the time it arrives.” |