Good Design Thursdays - Entry #56
Occasionally the design for a poster has to be changed, even after the marketing material has been printed and shipped to theatres, resulting in the studios issuing a recall and informing theatres to stop displaying the images. There can be any number of reasons, sometimes it’s an internal creative change of direction and sometimes it’s due to external demands. Here are three of the more notable one-sheets that have been recalled over the years. Only months before Revenge of the Jedi was due to hit theaters, George Lucas decided to change the title of the film, resulting in a recall of the first one-sheet issued. In the case of Pulp Fiction, the studio did not get permission to use Lucky Strikes cigarettes or the cover of the book used in this first version of the one-sheet. This led to a quick recall. The studio simply photoshopped over the cigarette pack and book cover and re-issued the poster. This one-sheet for the first Spiderman movie features a bold design, with the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center reflecting in the lens of Spiderman’s mask. Unfortunately, the poster was issued less than a month before the events of September 11, 2001. The studio took the appropriate action of recalling the poster and issuing one with a different image.