When they met last year with executives at New Line Cinema, marketing consultants Seth Lockhart and Jamil Barrie pitched their 10 favorite alternative titles for "Pride and Glory," a police drama starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell. Then they passed around a report with dozens of others that didn't make their cut.
"One of Our Own" caught the eye of Russell Schwartz, New Line's marketing chief at the time, who asked, "What's wrong with this one?"
That's when Lockhart, who hated "One of Our Own" because it sounded to him like a tag line, gave a kick under the table to Barrie -- who thought it perfectly suited the tale of cops betrayed by a corrupt colleague. When even the partners who call their consulting firm TitleDoctors disagree, it's clear the business of naming movies can be tricky.
"When movie titles don't work, studios are leaving potential earnings on the table," Lockhart says.
One of the most notorious examples of a missed opportunity because of an ill-chosen title was "The Shawshank Redemption," the 1994 prison drama starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. The film was lauded by critics but landed with a thud at the box office. More recently, the Russell Crowe boxing saga "Cinderella Man" and the futuristic thriller "Children of Men" also failed to capitalize on strong reviews, in part because of titles widely seen as turn-offs.
"Titles are one of the hardest things to do because every movie is an individual brand that is going to live in perpetuity," says Christine Birch, marketing president at DreamWorks Studios, "but you only have an opening weekend to prove that you've gotten it right."
Usually, of course, the title comes with the script. Sometimes it's picked by the producer or director, in other cases studio marketers. Occasionally, studios redo titles because of legal issues. More often, they're searching for a catchy and marketable name, sometimes with the aid of consultants such as the Ant Farm, Crew Creative and Rich in Meaning.
As it turned out, New Line stuck with "Pride and Glory" for its long-delayed drama, now set for release in 2009. Officials at the Time Warner Inc. unit declined to comment.
Getting studios to agree on a name change is never easy (none of the titles for the 13 films Lockhart and Barrie consulted on during their first year in business has been adopted). Filmmakers and production executives can become enamored of a movie's "working" title. And studios may have already invested millions in marketing a project under a particular name, making it financially costly to alter.
