The Boat That Rocked World premiere was held at Odeon Leicester Square on the 23rd March 2009.
"A red carpet wound through the middle of London's Leicester Square as women dressed in 60s' outfits danced on a plinth with vinyl record discs in the background. Sir Paul McCartney and his girlfriend Nancy Shevell were also pictured in good spirits on the red carpet. Geri Halliwell also turned heads in a gold mini-dress. Bond Girl Arterton described the film as "fun, fun, fun all the time. It was brilliant". Rhys Ifans, wearing rock star dark glasses and a snakeskin-style jacket, ambled up and down the red carpet Jane Seymour also attended the premiere as did Jonathan Ross with his daughters and son."
Celebrity guests of the premiere were all somehow linked to the music industry, really playing on the whole 'rock and roll' ethos of the film. The 60's style models provided fun photo-ops for all the stars and many of the pictures were funny and racy- completely capturing the light hearted and provocative nature of the film and an effort to secure front page headlines. Photos also later surfaced of star Gemma Arterton looking worse for wear whilst leaving the after party- synonymous with the young care free attitude of the 60's.
Unfortunately, Reality TV star Jade Goody had passed away the previous day (also Mother's Day) so much of the press was dedicated to her. To feature such an upbeat, comedic film alongside the tragic death of a young public figure would have been distasteful. In turn, this meant that the film did not get the coverage the studio would have hoped for.
Headlines from the 24th and 23rd of March
However, in the build up to the world premiere in London, many competitions were run.
Global Radio signed a deal with Cineworld and Universal Pictures to promote the film on its radio stations- a great example of cross media convergence.
On top of this, famous DJ Christian O'Connel broadcast his show on a boat in anticipation of the films release.
DJ's in Essex did a similar thing:
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Richard Curtis even auctioned off tickets to the premiere to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboats Institution
Although both The Boat That Rocked and Avatar both had their world premieres in Odeon Leicester Square, there were many differences between them.
The premiere for Avatar took place on the 10th December 2009. For a start, there were no huge headlines to contend with, so coverage of the event was saturated over the entertainment pages of every newspaper. The intense hype around the film created a huge turn out, though the screening itself was EXTREMELY EXCLUSIVE. Fox had embargoed reviews until the 14th so guests and critics were sworn to secrecy, providing even more of a challenge for tabloids to compete to reveal the slightest pieces of information on the film. In contrast to the typical red carpet, the Avatar premiere had a blue carpet in keeping with the predominant colour scheme of the film and brand marketing.
On December 4th, the video for the soundtrack of the film 'I See You' by Leona Lewis was released with the song available to purchase via the motion picture soundtrack on the 15th- during the week of the films global release. The famous BRITISH talent show winners video featured clips from the film. As she was busy promoting her own album in the states, she was not in attendance at the London premiere but sparkled her way to the front pages a few days later at the LA premiere wearing a stunning embellished gown landing her way onto fashion pages and best dressed lists across the country (and the globe) and helping to raise awareness of the film to a FEMALE AUDIENCE.
Like The Boat That Rocked, Avatar too had ticket giveaways to the premiere. A competition on the LG website in association with Total Film required fans to create their own Avatar- the grand winner receiving 2 tickets to the premiere and all expenses paid overnight stay in London. 366 runners up also got their moment of glory as their avatars were featured in two online adverts on the T3 and Total Film websites as well as winning a pair of Odeon tickets to see the movie on general release. The competition was only open to residents of the UK aged 16+.In addition to this, Coca Cola (again a HUGE GLOBAL BUSINESS) partnered with 20th Century Fox in a competition to win tickets for the UK premiere.
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