Cinematical

In an attempt to utilize some alternate means of advertising, Disney has employed Myspace to create some buzz for their upcoming horror flick, Stay Alive. Stay Alive tells the story of a group of friends who discover a brutal video game which turns deadly - the gamers die as their characters in the game die. The main character of the film is be a guy named Hutch, who now has his very own Myspace, in which he has been chronicling a few events leading up to the story of the film. Hutch uses the About Me section of his site to explain that he's a horror genre fanatic; he loves scary movies and games, listing Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 4 among his favorites. He goes on to say that he's recently got his hands on a beta version of a new horror game called Stay Alive, which a friend had been testing for the company that produced it. He says he's never seen anything like this game in terms of brutal horror; "if there was a line, this game leaped over it and turned around to take a piss on it."

It's becoming more and more common for studios to use the internet as a forum for advertising, which makes plenty of sense since today's younger generations practically live online. I've personally never gotten into the Myspace fad, but I know that it is quite the popular site, so it seems like an obvious choice for such a venture. Are such "alternate" means of advertising successful? It's probably far to early to find any concrete stats on that yet, but I'll say this: Hutch has good taste - RE4 was a fantastic game.