NG: It was odd. It was so ineptly marketed. It went on to be a huge hit internationally. It made over $150 million internationally but it did that in a world where it made the same amount of money in American and Russia in its first week of release. I don't know. What still amuses me, looking back on it, people at Paramount would say, "What's it like," and we'd say, "It's like 'The Princess Bride.'" And they'd say, "We can't mention 'Princess Bride' that didn't make money and it opened third to a Dudley Moore movie." And we'd say, "But people love that movie now and it's kind of like that." So what they did was more or less re-create the original marketing campaign for "The Princess Bride" and in effect repeating the same mistake and inflicting that on the world. They didn't have much of a clue. it was a hit in England and Russia and the rest of the world. It was fascinating. Very educational. The interesting thing is I had two movies coming out over a period of two months with "Stardust" and Beowulf." So I'd be sitting there in a marketing presentation for "Stardust" and then everyone would leave and I'd stay there and then the "Beowulf" people would come in. So I'd watch both and it was striking how incredibly comfortable they were with "Beowulf" and how they were promoting it and how completely lost they were with "Stardust." The main thing I learned was how completely dependent you are on trailers, ads and on tone of voice. They had something like "Princess Bride" and they promoted it like it was "Ella Enchanted." The people that would have liked it weren't finding it. That they are finding it now on DVD is interesting. I am absolutely fascinated to see how "Coraline" does. That's in theaters the first week in February.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/12/neil-gaiman-dre.html
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