Hollywood director David Fincher and visual effects lead Tim Miller will work with Microsoft on the launch trailer for Halo 4.
Video games are a business, and as a business they require marketing. Indie developers might get successful if their game goes viral on Youtube content creators, like Minecraft did. Mainstream games might go a little too far with their marketing, such as "Your mom will hate it" commercial for Dead Space 2. Since Halo 4 is nearly a month away from getting on our Xbox 360s, Microsoft has signed a deal with Hollywood staff to direct the launch trailer for Master Chief's return.
Microsoft and 343 Industries will be working with two well-known names in the Hollywood industry. Director David Fincher, who worked on "Fight Club" and "The Social Network" will be the executive producer for the trailer. And visual effects lead Tim Miller, who worked on "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" will direct the emotionally-charged look at the back story of Halo's iconic hero, Master Chief.
The two-minute trailer for Halo 4 will premiere during the October 18th episode of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", which airs on NBC at 11:35 PM CT. After that it will be available to watch on Halo Waypoint and Xbox YouTube channel immediately following the broadcast debut, around 6 AM BST.
I understand the idea of marketing is to promote a product to get consumer interest, but I believe Microsoft is missing the point here. They are trying to promote Halo 4 with the "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn" episodic movie, yet it fumbles in bringing in newbies to the franchise by not explaining the back-story to the game-world (newbies like me). All I know about the Halo universe is that it's a great multi-player game for the console if you want to shoot up your friends or capture a flag. A trailer that tries showing off the "emotionally-charged back story" of the Halo franchise seems to focus on the single-player element of the game, and I think a lot of the hardcore Halo fans are more interested in the multi-player.
Halo 4 will be available November 6th, 2012 for the Xbox 360.
