Harry Potter and the woman in black...

This Movie Poster Monday we'll be reviewing "The Woman in Black". This week's five points of the poster are:

(Image credit: Aceshowbiz.com)

1) We didn't recognize his name at first without the wizard hat, but what a fantastic way to grab the attention of the billions of Harry Potter movie poster fans! Those Harry Potter fans have been trained for a decade now to just go see any movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, so it almost doesn't matter what this movie is about.

2) Not completely abandoning the Harry Potter franchise, it appears that they asked Voldemort to appear in this movie poster. Nice move! It helps with the transition for those "Potter Heads". If they don't ease them into life without Harry and his pals, it might mess them up so much they'll never take off their wizard costumes.

3) We're just gonna say it! Kids are creepy! Kids without eyes are extra creepy. We can relate to these kids though... When Movie Poster Monday watched Harry in the play "Equus" in London, we wanted to gouge out our eyes too. More specifically, it's not that it was a bad play, or that Daniel was bad, we just weren't really prepared to see "Harry's wand".

4) On second thought, maybe they did catch a performance of "Equus"...  

5) So, I see they called this "The Woman in Black", but decided not only to not put any women in the movie poster, there's no one wearing black either. This reminds us of a retro movie poster that was sent to us called "Big Shots" which had no big shots in the poster. That strategy didn't work at all for "Big Shots" so we hope this turns out better for "The Woman in Black". The "Big Shots" movie poster designer never worked on another poster. After working as a visual merchandiser for Kmart and a greeter at The Gap, we hear he finally found his calling working the grill at an In-N-Out Burger. Mmm... what a delicious ending.

In conclusion, based on this thorough analysis (and the fact that a billion Harry Potter fans will storm the theaters) we predict that "The Woman in Black" will gross $35.9 million in its opening weekend. 

"The Grey" is pretty black and white...

Movie Poster Monday makes an aggressive start to 2012 with our first guest blogger! We are proud to welcome acclaimed mixed martial arts blogger, Mike McPhee, @ManCaveMMA, and owner of Mike's Man Cave, for his first movie poster review. (We hope he doesn't get bored and decide to practice submission holds on our interns...)

This Movie Poster Monday we’ll be reviewing “The Grey”.  This week’s five points of the poster are:

(Image credit: filmofilia.com)

1. Liam Neeson is by far the biggest star in this movie. By placing his name at the top of the movie poster it draws you in.  Fans know the name and recognize him from some legendary roles, so prominently displaying it adds validity to the movie.  Plus, he was a Jedi, so you will be mind-tricked by his eyes into seeing this movie.

2. The wound on his face ties in with the tagline ‘Live Or Die On This Day’.  From the poster it is not clear what the movie is about, but the injury and the tagline do give the potential movie goer a glimpse into the struggle or battle Liam will face.  We have seen Liam Neeson do battle in several movies and know he will pull off the role very successfully.  Designers of the poster are hoping fans will be drawn into the hope of what may be another masterful performance.  Either that or fans want to see Liam Neeson kick the crap out of some bad guys.

3. The rest of the cast and information on who made the movie is displayed on the poster but the print is small.  From a distance it is nothing more than a blur.  The focus is clearly on Liam Neeson to sell this movie poster by himself.  With no other known names other than Dermot Mulroney, and the lack of a big name director, the studio is hedging all their bets on Mr. Neeson.  If he can train Batman, then who else do you really need?

4. A relatively new addition to posters & other advertisements is the QR code.  Fans with smart phones who have a scanning app can be taken to a dedicated website where more information is available on the film.  We thought about scanning it, but got distracted by re-runs of  "Beavis and Butthead"...  So glad they are back!

5. Ok, they've started showing "16 and Pregnant" so we're back. In a rare show of social media savvy, the featured website for the movie is not one from the studio but from Facebook and there's a hashtag! Just for fun let's make #TheGrey the trending topic this week, but in your Tweets talk about things that are grey in color and not the movie...

The Force is strong with Liam Neeson.  The studio is banking on him to sell this movie.  Liam is very capable of doing that and we see no reason why this movie will not do well.  In conclusions, based on the analysis we would predict a $26.5 million opening weekend for Qui-Gon Jinn.