There's been a lot of anxious chatter lately about how star power isn't what it used to be, but when studios pony up big paychecks to land those stars, you'd still expect them to show off their expensive assets on the poster. In 2010, however, the rules have changed. Here are six posters with big stars or big budgets that kept those famous faces off the one-sheet.
When Knight and Day underperformed at the box office, Fox marketing head Tony Sella fell on his sword, telling the LA Times, "Blame me, don't blame Tom Cruise." Why not spread the wealth? Cruise certainly didn't do the marketing team any favors by alienating the audience the film hoped to attract, but the silhouetted stars on the poster tacitly admit defeat. This poster doesn't scream "Saul Bass" as Sella said it was intended to -- instead, it says, "We know you're not interested in our movie star, and we don't blame you."
On the other hand, the poster for Buried does pay homage to the simply stark designs of famed graphic designer Bass, though it does so at the expense of star Ryan Reynolds (who doesn't even get so much as an above-the-title credit). Unlike Cruise, Reynolds is a star on the upswing with few negatives, but in this case, we're living in a post-Paranormal Activity world, where the low-fi, high-concept nature of the film is its main selling point. (Also, Lionsgate's Tim Palen never met an arty teaser poster he didn't like.)
Is Universal worried about a Michael Cera backlash? Sure, anyone already familiar with the movie can recognize Cera's shape, but it's notable how hidden his face is on the one-sheet. Then again, this is one of the more head-scratching posters of the year; Scott Pilgrim is a hyperkinetic, videogame-drunk action comedy, but the one-sheet studiously avoids conveying any of that. Even Comic-Con visitor Michelle Rodriguez was stumped.
Leonardo DiCaprio had a sizable hit this year in Shutter Island, so how did the Inception one-sheet take advantage of that? By shrinking him down to microscopic size and letter-spacing out his name so much that it's virtually unreadable. Then again, he shouldn't take it personally. Inception may have a starry, Oscar-friendly cast, but WB was only concerned with selling two things: spectacle, and that crucial credit of "From the Director of The Dark Knight." Who can blame them, since it's clearly worked?
Kids may have known what this property was, but adults didn't -- and that one-sheet didn't help any. Sure, star Logan Lerman's not exactly a name yet, but there were a bunch of actual stars (among them Pierce Brosnan and Uma Thurman) that the studio wasn't selling, either. By obscuring Lerman's face and, thus, his age, perhaps marketers wanted to keep things vague enough to intrigue an older demographic. Instead, it didn't hook anybody.
Never Let Me Go was lucky enough to hit a casting jackpot: Not only does it have a proven star in Keira Knightley, but Carey Mulligan was nominated for an Oscar a few months ago, and Andrew Garfield was just anointed the new Spider-Man. Still, all three were forsaken for this arty image of a pier. What, do they think this movie stars Jennifer Connelly or something?