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| No, Miz. No. Photo Credit: WWE.com |
However, as a viewer of the show, it gets really goddamn annoying when that secondary product starts to take the focus of a huge chunk of the primary one. WWE is not shy about promoting their films department, and predictably, it weighs down the wrestling narrative. Last night was maybe the worst example of this in recent memory because of how pervasive their advertising pitches were for their two theatrical releases and the straight-to-DVD film, The Marine 3. It seemed like every other segment on RAW was them showing a trailer or a commercial for any one of those three movies. The piece de resistance was an extended Highlight Reel segment based around making fun of Wade Barrett "only" having a bit role in Dead Man Down, which turned into a pissing contest between RED BELLY and The Miz over whose movie roles were better. Good shorthand rule here, if Hulk Hogan and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper couldn't make a story trope work, then neither can you. Barrett has been the brunt of this story for three weeks, first taking shit from Sheamus over it and now The Miz.
I want to know who thought it'd be a good idea to have Barrett get berated for being in a movie that WWE actually wants to promote. I mean, not only are they using WWE time to promote movies, but they're doing it poorly. Apparently, Dead Man Down only made something like $8M in its opening weekend, which fell short of its $30M budget. I don't know about you, but marketing that movie on the whole to your crowd by making fun of a dude for being in it wouldn't make me chomping at the bit to see it if I was on the fence. It's almost as if the film department and the carnies in creative seem to be at odds with how well this venture is working out for WWE. Strange...
Regardless, when you can't promote the one thing at the expense of the other correctly, both products suffer, especially the important one, i.e. the wrestling audience. Again, I don't have books in front of me, but my guess is wrestling is still the more profitable entity for WWE. Just a hunch here. When RAW is on Mondays and Smackdown Fridays, it's not the people going to see the goddamn movies that are showing advertisers that WWE programming is a worthwhile canvas for their commercials. It's not movie critics who pay $50-$60 a pop each month for the pay-per-view events. Wrestling fans are the more likely ones to go see these movies rather than the fans of these movies are to go to a wrestling show. For all his flaws, Vince McMahon is one of the greatest pure wrestling promoters of all-time (note, not a commentary on quality, but more on salesmanship). I hate to say "stick to wrestling, nerd!" because if he wants to branch out and try to expand his business plan, he's more than welcome to.
However, it's clear that he doesn't know the first thing about overseeing a company that markets a product he's not entirely familiar with. He knows wrestling, knows how to sell it, knows how to promote it, and from time to time, knows how to do it creatively in the right. If he wants to get in the movie business, he and the people under him need to know how to sell movies. What they're doing right now does not show me that they have the first idea on how to do that.
The shame part is that there was an all-time excellent wrestling show mired underneath all the movie promotion. If you extract all the good out of that show and replace the movie filler with some cute wrestling-based filler, that show is goddamn amazing. Instead, McMahon and WWE are wading out into the deep end of the pool without knowing they're actually going there. They think they're going to be swimming in even more money than before, but the harsh reality is that they're going to end up drowning, and unhappy wrestling fans who really don't wanna see their show hijacked by shitty trailer placement won't throw them a life preserver.