Captain Marvel's latest ad campaign might just be its most elaborate yet. Stanley's Video -- a chain of fake video rental stores -- are popping up in various locations. The stores don't actually rent videos. Instead, they contain a Marvel-themed scavenger hunt.
User joshuarlee1 posted about one pop-up store on Reddit, which he found inside a mall in Vancouver, Canada. The user also posted several more images to Imgur, which you can find here. Participants were given clues and had to find the correct 6 movies, with the prize being a Captain Marvel logo pin badge. The walls are populated with empty DVD cases, which consist primarily of Disney-owned titles.
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The stores will certainly induce nostalgia for anyone who grew up visiting them in the '90s. Captain Marvel's marketing has embraced '90s nostalgia, having released Magic-Eye posters and a website reminiscent of those found on Angelfire and GeoCities.
Marvel Studios is no stranger to viral marketing, though this is one of its biggest outings. The MCU is traditionally promoted via YouTube clips of WHIH Newsfront with Christine Everheart, the fictional news broadcast that appears throughout the films. Other marketing has been used over the years though, such as a LinkedIn page for Iron Fist protagonist Ward Meachum and a prank video promoting Spider-Man: Homecoming, which saw Spidey swinging into Starbucks alongside unsuspecting patrons.
Captain Marvel is on track to have one of the strongest Marvel Cinematic Universe openings to date. Stateside, the movie is eyeing a $160 million dollar opening weekend, but this may be a conservative estimate. Current projections place the film at making at least $400 million domestically, which would make it the fourth highest domestic grossing MCU film, right behind films like Black Panther and Captain America: Civil War. It's also expected to perform well overseas, especially in China.
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Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jude Law as Yon-Rogg, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos and Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau. The film arrives on March 8.
(via ComicBook.com)