Warner Bros. (TWX) hardly needs to do any marketing to get comic book geeks to show up for "Dark Knight," the new Batman movie. But aside from sponsoring MySpace's redesign and all the viral marketing it's done with movie trailers, Warner Bros. is also spending a little bit of its massive promotional budget on a little Web series aimed directly at the Comic-Con crowd: "Kyle Piccolo: Comic Shop Therapist."
Warner Bros. paid the entire production budget -- $36,000 -- for the first five episodes of the series, set in Manhattan's Midtown Comics, and made by NYC-based Web video production house For Your Imagination. (Warner will also attach the "Dark Knight" trailer to the videos, which are distributed on YouTube, blip.tv, MySpace, DailyMotion and iTunes.)
Why? The show has a good bit of built-in street cred with comic book nerds. The co-creator and director happens to be John Cassaday, an X-Men illustrator and the kind of guy comic book fans will wait for hours to meet. Key to "Dark Knight's" success will be the kind of repeat business that the hardcore fans tend to shower on favored comic-derived films -- so sponsoring "Piccolo" could be a good bet.
See Also:
Domino's Pizza Tries To Cash In On "Dark Knight" Online Buzz, Fails
