Bohemian Rhapsody: A success not only as a movie but in the way it was marketed.

22nd February

Published by Lucas Harman

22nd February

As the Oscars are fast approaching we are taking a look at one on 2018’s most successful movies, Bohemian Rhapsody.  When the movie release date was announced, social media discussions began on whether the movie would follow the band’s story or just Freddie Mercury’s story. This caused a large number of people talking about the movie, hoping it will live up to their expectations and keep up with the premise of what happened with the band.

On the 15th of May 2018, the first teaser trailer was released, it generated 208 million views on the first day. On 17th of July 2018,  the first full-length trailer was released and it beat the teaser trailer views within the first hour. The teaser trailer had built up so much hype that people were at the edge of their seats for the full-length trailer- a great marketing strategy.

The cast got high praise for how much they resembled the members of Queen which lead to the movie having a positive image in the viewers’ minds already. The director said in an interview “this film won’t just focus on the music but also all the impact they put on the world and dealing with their social life”, which we believe it did just that. One month before the film’s release tickets for the movie went up for sale and 3 Odeon cinemas in Britain were sold out after only a week of tickets being on sale.

Bohemian Rhapsody movie has its own Twitter page that has over 100 thousand followers, and an Instagram​ account, 7​46 thousand followers. Even before the movie was released the social media pages for Bohemian Rhapsody​ were overflowing with support and excitement. The platforms would release teasers and count downs on their pages which would reach over 12 thousand likes at a time. The week before the release the social media sites did a count down for the movie, each count down post brought in upwards of 180 thousand likes and approximately 300 comments. This social media strategy not only raised awareness for the movie but acted as a reminder to when the release was and helped the movie achieve outstanding results on its release date.

Once the film was released it went straight to number one and became the biggest selling movie in the world at that time, it remained at number one for eight consecutive days. Well, deservingly it stayed in the top ten for seven weeks, earning $69,160,548 worldwide in the first week, beating its budget of $52 million. The movie stayed in cinemas for 4 months after its release and is still in cinemas even after the DVD and streaming release; presumably, people want to experience Bohemian Rhapsody and all its glory on the big screen.

The social media pages for the movie continued to post about the movie, the actors, award nominations and more. This continued social media helped the movie maintain its momentum and keep its followers entertained just as the movie did, still to this day people are posting about what they think of the movie.

On the 7th of January 2019, Rami Malek won the award for the best actor at the Golden Globes. Furthermore, on January 22nd it was announced that Bohemian Rhapsody had achieved five Academy Awards nominations including one for the best picture category. The results will be revealed at the 91st Academy Awards which will be held on the 24th of February 2019.

To end off, I believe that the social media pages helped boost the movie from before the movie released, it acted as a support during the showing and will continue to be a support to this wonderful movie. I believe Bohemian Rhapsody should be the winner of the best picture due to it is a mind-blowing story, featuring the unbelievable classic songs of Queen, and incredible acting by all cast members. I feel Rami Malek is a strong candidate to win the best actor award for his incredible performance as Freddie Mercury, after everything he went through to bring Freddie and Queen back to life.       

   

This article was written by Lucas, our Jago apprentice from Stepping Stones School in Hindhead. Lucas was given this task by our social media intern, Jess. She reviewed and edited the work for publishing.