The Original Movie Posters Blog - ART OF THE MOVIES

For many of us, the only examples of movie publicity that we come across are the movie posters that we know and love, but they are only one part of the huge marketing campaign that accompanied a film.

Dating back to the 1910s studios have produced ‘press books’ to encourage a cinema manager to push their film harder than any other.

To bring that to life, we take a good look at a film from 1969 and its press book, Guy Hamilton’s all-star World War II thriller “Battle of Britain”...

How many of us have sat staring at a movie poster wishing that we could be part of the movie? 

We've been doing just that watching "The Dark Crystal : Age of Resistance" on Netflix and before it premiered, we had our chance to star, if only for a few seconds in a small clip... 

In the 2014 book “The Art of Robert E. McGinnis”, the artist states “Painting is addictive. There is never enough time, never enough satisfaction … Nevertheless, painting is a good friend and I’m fortunate to be blissfully under its spell.”

That probably explains why, in a career now well into its eighth decade, one of the most successful commercial illustrators of the twentieth century is still producing stunning works of art.

In this blog post we pull together about six month’s research to try and show all of the movie posters of this phenomenal artist and illustrator...

A little under two months before it hits the big screen, Lucasfilm have released the final trailer and release poster for the last episode of the Star Wars Saga - "The Rise of Skywalker"

See them both here!

Halloween is only a couple of weeks away, so we thought we would get you in the ‘trick or treat’ mood with an opportunity to watch the very first horror film (from 1896) and see a few of our favourite scary movie posters!

Which is your favourite film for the witching hour?

2019 has already delivered some of the biggest films of recent years. April gave us Marvel's Avengers: Endgame. Summer gave us the highly anticipated Toy Story 4, The Lion King and Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and as I write this, the astonishing Joker has just hit the big screen.

Here are our pick (with all the trailers) of the Autumn and Winter releases! 

Movie posters are produced around the world and the savvy should ensure that they look at non-English language posters, some of which are the most stylish out there.

However, the large number of International poster formats can be confusing. This blog post continues our 'Poster Names and Sizes' series and provides a convenient downloadable Infographic showing common French movie poster names and sizes...

This month the jury of the 76th Venice Film Festival announced the winner of their highest honour, the Golden Lion.

Alongside Cannes' Palme d'Or and Berlin's Golden Bear, the Golden Lion is among the elite of European film awards.

So, the jury's announcement that the Golden Lion was won by Todd Philip's "Joker" was all the more amazing...

This week marks the first birthday of the Original Movie Posters Blog - sixty-nine posts showcasing movie poster history, movie poster artists (old and new) and the latest in movie news.

Thank you for reading and being a part of it!

In celebration, this week we are going to take a look at this rare and intriguing Star Wars poster...

Bidding on the second ‘Original Film Posters Online’ sale of the year closed at Sotheby’s on the 5th September, with the one hundred and ninety lots returning a total auction value of £393,000. That’s nearly £500,000 with Sotheby’s 25% buyer’s premium.

The results painted an interesting picture...

Over recent weeks, one movie poster (for Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood') has attracted more attention than any other.

The question everyone has been asking us? “Who illustrated that?”. The answer? "Mr Steven Chorney".

We reached out to him and were blown away when he agreed to have a chat.

We've packed the post with his amazing artwork. Enjoy!

Back in January, we reported that Netflix and The Jim Henson Company were working on a prequel series to 1982’s fantasy adventure “The Dark Crystal”. For those too young to have seen the original film, it introduced groundbreaking puppetry to create Thra, a magical planet populated with amazing alien creatures such as Geflings, Skeksis and urRus, battling for control of a powerful Crystal.

Netflix have now announced the series will premier on 30th August. You can find out more (including all of the incredible trailers) here...