MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Philip Morris was given a degree of creative control over Superman II through its payment for product placement in the movie.
A while back, I did a piece about the history of product placement in movies (the truth is that it goes back waaaaaaaay further than you might think), but the fascinating thing is that the cigarette industry really didn't start spending a good deal of money on product placement in films until the 1970s for one very simple reason - up until that point, they didn't HAVE to, as the film industry was doing a wonderful job promoting cigarette usage on its own, so there was little reason to actually try to PAY the filmmakers to include cigarette imagery when smoking in films was ubiquitous.
HOW THE SUPERMAN FILMS FIRST USED CIGARETTES
By the late 1970s, though, that was less of the case and so the cigarette industry started to get involved, but even then, at first it was relatively subtle, in part because the United States government would not allow for the advertisement of cigarettes in American-produced films. Therefore, instead, you would see stuff like in the very first Superman film, where Margot Kidder smokes Marlboros that were provided to the studio by Philip Morris and people sometimes forget how central cigarettes were to one of the most iconic sequences in the film, Superman and Lois' famous interview (where, in retrospect, it is awfully cringe worthy to see Superman let Lois know that she does not, in fact, have lung cancer)...
That usage of Marlboros sort of undercuts what people typically think of when they think of product placement. For instance, in an old Movie Legends Revealed, I noted that FedEx did not pay for its products to be used so prominently in the film, Cast Away. Director Robert Zemeckis noted, "There was absolutely no product placement. We weren’t paid by anybody to place products in the movie. I did that in the past, and it wasn’t worth the little bit of money that they give you, because then you end up with another creative partner, which you don’t need. However, it just seemed to me that the whole integrity of the movie would be compromised if this was some phony trans-global letter delivery service, with some Hollywood fake logo and all that. It wouldn’t seem like it would be real. So very simply, we asked Federal Express for their permission to use their logo, and they could’ve said no. And that was it." However, at the same time, FedEx did give the filmmakers access to a great deal of FedEx resources and materials, and its president even appeared in the film! So often, the question is just over what "paid product placement" means.
For instance, Josie and the Pussycats famously mocked product placement, and also was not paid for any of the products used in the film, and yet, it still used a LOT of donated products in that film, in very much non-ironic or satirical ways (like the instruments the band played, for instance). So, like Lois Lane smoking Marlboros, that's product placement without it being the dreaded "paid product placement."
HOW DID SUPERMAN II USE CIGARETTES?
However, for Superman II, things got a whole lot crazier.
As you may or may not know, the original concept for Superman and Superman II was that Richard Donner would direct both movies back-to-back to save time and money. The films would then be cut into two separate films (this is the approach that the producers of the film, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, had used for their successful The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers films, directed by Richard Lester). However, due to creative differences, Donner was removed from the project and Lester was hired to finish Superman II, including new shooting in England.
Well, in that point in time, Philip Morris International then worked out a deal with the Salkinds to pay them roughly $40,000 to include Marlboro product placement in the additional shots of the film. There would be the use of a giant Marlboro billboard, but most notably, in a major fight scene on the streets of Metropolis between Superman and the Phantom Zone Kryptonian villains, a fight would send Superman flying into a Marlboro delivery truck (of course, there were actually no such thing as Marlboro-labled delivery trucks, as Philip Morris delivered its cigarettes in unlabeled vehicles to deter theft)...
The most remarkable aspect of this deal, though, was that Philip Morris was allowed to have an actual say in the PLOT of the film! The deal noted, We shall have absolute discretion as to the final content of the Film and all artistic and technical decisions over all aspects of production and post-production of the Film." There was a separate clause noting that they were specifically insisting on protecting the good name of Marlboro, stating, "If there is any reference in the edited footage of the whole film that might reasonably be construed as detrimental to tho Marlboro brand name, wo:shall remove all exposure of the Material from the release print of the Film."
I don't know for sure, but my best guess is that Philip Morris probably was not a fan of the first film even JOKING about Lois Lane having lung cancer, so that was probably why the company tried to make sure that if it was going to spend money on this film, there would be nothing even vaguely negative regarding cigarettes.
Philip Morris then also paid to have another cigarette brand advertised in Supergirl, as well. The United States Congress did not like this, but Philip Morris explained that it did not do product placement like this in American movies, only movies filmed overseas. Eventually, the practice ended period (but, of course, Philip Morris continued to supply free cigarettes to movies, like the truck of stolen Lucky Strikes in the first Beverly Hills Cop).
The legend is...
STATUS: True
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