LOS ANGELES, May 15 — Question: How do you market a movie that has near 100 percent public awareness, yet has been seen by almost no one? Answer, as Sony Pictures sees it: Very, very carefully.
In contemporary Hollywood, movies released without first undergoing test screenings, media screenings, "tastemaker" screenings and screenings for critics are fairly rare; that course is usually reserved for duds that studios would rather nobody notice.
For a movie like Sony's "Da Vinci Code" — with huge anticipation, a blockbuster-size budget, a major movie star in Tom Hanks, an Oscar-winning director in Ron Howard and source material read by tens of millions of fans — it is something close to unprecedented. Yet that has been the studio's course.
"The Da Vinci Code" will make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night. Critics and other journalists will first see the movie on Tuesday night, barely allowing them time to write their articles for the Wednesday premiere and Friday opening in theaters around the world.
Even theater owners, who by law must be allowed to see a film before formally booking it for their movie houses, saw the film — running two hours and 29 minutes — only Friday, which by exhibition standards is as last minute as it gets.
The strategy, studio representatives say, is to preserve a climate of mystery and excitement around the movie, despite the fact that anyone who is interested probably already knows the plot.
"There was an inordinate amount of interest in this film, and we wanted to contain the excitement and anticipation," said Valerie Van Galder, president of domestic marketing for Sony Pictures, speaking from London, where executives and the cast had gathered to take a train with selected media representatives down to Cannes. "We wanted people to see the movie for themselves and not react to months of endless debate about the movie."
While that approach has not prevented the debate, it was particularly championed by Brian Grazer, the film's producer, said executives involved with the film, who were granted anonymity because of the studio's policy of secrecy regarding the film. To limit exposure in the age of blogs and constant leaks, both Sony and Mr. Grazer's company, Imagine Entertainment, decided to forgo test screenings, a form of market research usually considered critical to fine-tuning a picture.
In the past, Mr. Howard has said he would be loath to release a film without it. In a 1998 interview with CNN about test screenings, he said: "What I would hate to do is put the movie out there, find out that the audience is confused about something or upset about something that you could have fixed, and go, 'God, I had no idea they'd respond that way.' "
Instead, the film was shown on the Sony lot, with strict security, to close friends and family of the filmmakers, said Michael Rosenberg, the president of Imagine. Their comments were used in place of more scientific feedback, he said.
The concerns, said executives involved with the picture, were that information about the film could start a nit-picking debate over the filmmaker's choices in adapting the book, rather than focus on the movie overall, or that it might fuel religious opposition to the film.
Early in the marketing, tension arose between Sony and Imagine over the approach to take, with Sony more inclined to feed mass interest in the film, and Imagine focused on trying to maintain more of the film's mystery, said executives close to the project. In addition, Sony was worried about contributing to a religious controversy over the perceived anti-Catholic aspect of the film — which has elements in the Catholic Church conspiring to conceal the secret life of Christ — while Imagine wanted to use the controversy as a promotional tool, an executive said.
At one point Sony favored taking out an ad during the Super Bowl, which Imagine opposed. The studio and producers also turned down the offer of a Time magazine cover, which some might consider to be the Holy Grail of free publicity (perhaps a misnomer in this case, however), because the magazine editors needed to see the film to do so.
Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures, disputed the notion of tension with Imagine. "I have been as close to it as anybody, and I found them to be so helpful in this process," he said. "A lot of issues come up that don't normally come up. We're very happy with the result."
With movie research showing awareness of the film at 96 percent, and the barometer of "definite interest" polling at around 60 percent, the studio is most concerned to do nothing that could put a dent in those figures. Industry estimates of the film's expected ticket sales for the opening weekend at the domestic box office range from million to over 0 million. The marketing materials were also designed to nod at elements of the film without revealing too much: first came the iconic image of the Mona Lisa from the cover of the best-selling book, followed by pictures of Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou as the characters trying to solve a murder in the Louvre, followed by a picture of Silas, the evil conspirator from the Catholic group Opus Dei and Mr. Hanks and Ms. Tautou — photographed from above — as they rush past a group of nuns.
But much is at stake with this film, as even the most close-mouthed officials will privately acknowledge. One executive close to the film, who acknowledged being nervous, said, "There are amazing expectations on this title, and there is no knowledge of what the audience and the critics will think."
