When it comes to partnerships, contracts, legal, creative, and studio approvals this title was definitely one of the more complicated ones. Leading up to the holidays, this became a strange collaboration with Universal Pictures as leadership decided this should be distributed as a Peacock Original, on platform. Production had completed, so there was no opportunity for a potential shoot with Melissa McCarthy or Paapa Essiedu. Through a game of telephone, the Peacock Films team was providing art direction on the trailer, the key art, and all OOH placements to Universal, who was then communicating this feedback to Aspect (AV), and ‘N House Creative (Static). Universal then sent back this revised creative to Peacock for review and weigh in from Creative Directors/Producers, and the cycle repeated.
On top of this agency workflow, this was a cross collaboration between multiple studios: Universal, Working Title, and Peacock (as a distributor). The writer and director pedigree (Richard Curtis and Sam Boyd) were legally required to appear on all art, and contractually scaled up to a certain percentage in relation to the title “Genie” for all OOH placements. Additionally, Melissa McCarthy had a lot of feedback on her likeness and how she was represented in the art, which meant many rounds of approval up and down the chain. I Art Directed all trailer GFX, design holiday based Peacock branding, Art Directed Key Art, multiple OOH placements, and built film-based style guides/toolkits for Universal Pictures (and our versioning partners) to make use of.
Skills Involved
Art Directed Key Art Design, Designed/Directed Trailer Motion Graphics, OOH AV/Static, Versioning, Creative collaboration with studio heads and executives.
Agencies / Studios
Universal Pictures, Aspect, ICP, ‘N House Creative, Englewood Cliffs
When
November 2023
Hero Trailer
The trailer was edited by Aspect, and through a web of emails/messages back and forth, I provided the Peacock branded GFX that were re-skinned for the holidays. This title introduced the need for a “Peacock” studio card, which didn’t necessarily exist in the toolkit. This lived next to Universal and Working Title within the first 5 seconds. Alan Cumming makes a brief but important appearance in this cut, considering his heavy involvement in the award winning Peacock Original unscripted series “The Traitors”
Key Art
The Key Art was comped together by ‘N House Creative, which was believed to be Universal’s own in-house design agency, based out of Los Angeles. As we went through many revisions (but never able to speak to ‘N House directly) we were struggling to get to a place that felt authentic to Christmas in New York City (since that’s where the story takes place). Because we weren’t able to do a shoot on seamless, the final deliverable needed to compensate for full-bleed assets used in larger OOH placements or digital statics. In the end, Melissa McCarthy needed to be featured with a tight crop that read clearly – especially considering smaller on-platform thumbnails. I provided additional art direction for the final cinemagraph.
HERO ART
CINEMAGRAPH
OUT OF HOME
Sunset Boulevard
This static billboard was a great example of the many parties involved in the final outcome. The “Peacock Original” eyebrow always sits above title (per branding guidelines). Contractually, “Melissa McCarthy in” must live above “Genie”. Working Title and Universal billing blocks sat in the lower left corner. But most notably, on all static OOH placements, the Writer/Director callout needed to be 30% of the size of the Main Title. So the larger we made “Genie”, the larger the pedigree would be.
OUT OF HOME
LA Live Plaza
While the LA Live (or Peacock Plaza) placement wasn’t necessarily new for the Peacock Films team, it was for Universal who ended up delivering the final assets. I provided detailed guidance as to what performs best on which screen, based on previous IP we’ve designed for this space. The same legal restrictions applied to static boards here as they did for Sunset Boulevard above.
