HOW TO PROMOTE TDKR NOW?

The Colorado shooting poses a difficult marketing predicament for Warner Bros., which had developed multimedia campaigns to promote The Dark Knight Rises, not all of them intertwined. While it said on Friday that it had yanked its commercials from TV networks and websites and canceled a red-carpet premiere of the movie in Paris, ads for the movie were still appearing on ticket-selling sites like Fandango.com. MediaPost.com also reported that Movietickets.com was offering a free music download and game connected with the movie. The studio said over the weekend that it has canceled red-carpet festivities for the film’s opening in Mexico and Japan featuring the film’s stars but that it would “proceed with our previously scheduled special screenings for invited guests and promotional winners.” Warner Bros. is also apparently having difficulty getting a handle on the marketing campaign for Gangster Squad. That film includes a scene in which mobsters fire into a theater audience from behind the screen. Warner Bros. had asked theaters to yank the trailer for the movie, but the Associated Press reported that it was nevertheless being shown in theaters across the U.S.