Audience Engagement Research: Joker

Joker is a thriller about Arthur Fleck and his mental transition into the Joker. The movie is violent and has mature themes, and is also about an evolving character, which is similar to our film.
The movie advertised posters with the Joker being the focus point of them. The point of these posters was to get people's attention for the new movie while not giving away too much information about the plot.

A teaser trailer was released by the producers on YouTube, which racked up 62.1 million views. The trailer consisted of short scenes from the movie to make sure the story was not given away, but enough to get peoples' interest. After that, they released two more longer trailers that were similar to the first one.
The movie's website consisted of basic advertising and trailers.
The producers released banner ads on other websites, which sparked controversy on the internet about the movie. This was because of the recent shootings in the media, which people cited as evidence that America was not ready for a movie like this. Nonetheless, it was released, and the dissension over the movie only added to its popularity.
Based on Joker's success, it is clear that posters and trailers are an effective way to advertise a movie. We could implement these strategies in our own film, like creating a main character poster or a short teaser trailer, to maximize our publicity. Although a risky idea, finding a controversial time to release our film - possibly during a drug or crime epidemic - could also raise the attention of the media. However, this could hurt our film as we would likely be seen as cynical for doing something like that, so we will stick with conventional methods.