'Across the Universe' barred from marketing The Beatles

According to a Variety report last Friday, Sony Corporation's (NYSE: SNE) Columbia Pictures was barred from making any reference to The Beatles in marketing Julie Taymor's film Across the Universe. SonyATV Publishing, the firm that manages the rights to Lennon/McCartney songs allowed Revolution Studios to adapt songs by the group into a story set to the backdrop of the changing atmosphere of the 1960s (the era when the songs were written and performed). The report also indicates that critics' reviews mentioned the band, which was outside the scope of the marketing limitations. Coincidentally, so was the Variety report.

While it is no surprise that mentioning The Beatles was barred from marketing the film, any viewer who sees the movie and asks "what's this about" must surely be from another "universe." The stylized type for the name of the film on advertisement posters is modeled after The Beatles own mid-60s "logo" and the tagline is "all you need is love" after all. Of course, Sony marketing's Valerie Van Galder points out this much to Variety but emphasized that the studio did not need to "remind audiences of the film's connection to one of the most venerable brands in the history of entertainment."

All the same, Variety fails to mention that the surviving members of that brand, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were "pleased" by the film. Despite the apparent ease that the studio and filmmakers had marketing the film without mentioning The Beatles, one has to wonder (naively perhaps) why SonyATV Publishing would have disallowed the connection when the publishing and distribution company's are both under one corporation. If you wanted to make as many connections as possible with The Beatles, the production company even shares its name with a song. In the end, it hardly matters that marketing the film was barred in this way -- it is not that hard a connection to hide.

The film was expanded from a "limited engagement" this weekend, managing to pull in $2.05 million.