4. The advertising cost a whopping $24 million
The advertising of Independence Day was incredible. Roger Ebert (who didn’t like the movie) claimed that the only reason it made so much money is because the advertising was so good.
That’s kind of the way advertising works.
An incredible $24 million dollars was spent on promoting the movie which was mostly just that shot of the White House being destroyed. To put that number into perspective, the entire movie was made for around $75 million. Meaning the advertising extras were around a third of the whole budget!
The best example of this advertising was the Superbowl XXX advert (which alone cost them $1.5 million to buy) which just shows the devastating power of the alien’s attack. It’s genius.
So good was the advertising campaign that Warner Bros. pushed back the release of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! from the summer to the Christmas of the same year and it forced Steven Speilberg to postpone his plans to remake War of the Worlds. Watch the Superblow XXX trailer below:
Originally published July 4, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
