FilmPlug

Fox Atomic snuck in a redesign last weekend behind my back! It's a huge improvement in design, function, content and available ad space.

I started this blog last July with a post about their ComicCon-timed launch, so I was excited to see how it is evolving. The goal still seems to be the retention of young, single-film audiences at a destination website offering a content-bridge to hold their interests between releases. I love the idea, but am confused about where all the "community" went between the launch and this redesign. I signed up for the Digital Locker, but only got a "stay-tuned" email. I was hoping this would be the community part, but signing-in gives me no extra benefits (that I can tell).

That said, this is a huge undertaking and I'm confident they're just getting started and more will be revealed soon. The Daily Reports with live correspondents is fun and does a great job of integrating with links to other sites. Snackfootage is a collection of hard-to-watch disaster videos, not to be confused with Stupid Videos which is more Jackass-type fare. The Dave Hill program features a guy interviewing people at ComicCon.

Comics & Games looks like it will be a major element but is all coming soon. Contests seems to be the most interactive with The Nightmare Factory's Submit Your Nightmare, but I'm unable to pull up the Recent Nightmares to read the entries.

Each Fox Atomic film gets its own page with a gallery and links to sites and trailers. I wonder if anyone will be confused by the fact that regular Fox and Searchlight films are featured here. I get it, but will John Q. Teen? Will he care? Prolly not. I'm guessing these pages might be more fleshed out in the future. The film they're pushing the hardest is Turistas and I have to say the MySpace page for that film is one of the best I've seen. Nevermind that it's mostly coming soon, it fits SO well in the awkward MySpace template that you forget it's an MS page. Kudos to the creative team.

Overall, I still applaud the studio's effort to do something smart and value-added for the studio site. I miss the community elements but I'm hopeful they're in the pipeline. The video-masher Blender is still promised, but what of the recent Yahoo! acquisition of Jumpcut, the partner creating Blender? Stay tuned...