Bicoastal/international MJZ, The Mill, London, and 180 Amsterdam have ignited the new ad campaign for Adidas’ F50i football boot. A 90-second ad features football legend Zinedine Zidane on an epic quest to uncover the secret of Barcelona midfielder Lionel “The Spark” Messi’s past. The spot debuted on U.K. television during the recent Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United and is part of a digitally led global marketing campaign.
Shot in the style of a graphic comic book, the spot opens in the streets of Buenos Aires and features the hooded figure of Zidane embarking on a journey to discover what caused Messi’s ‘spark’. As Zidane sparks his lighter, we are transported back in time to see a group of children playing football in the city’s back streets. When a van crashes into a power pole, electrical sparks rain down over a little boy casting him in a heavenly beam of light while a mysterious stranger hides in the shadows. Could this be the secret of Messi’s success?
The scene then cuts to a crowded football stadium. The Mill used Massive to create thousands of digital characters with artificial intelligence giving them realistic individual behavior. There we witness a grown-up Messi demonstrating his electric footwork on the pitch as Zidane looks on, pondering over the intriguing myth behind Messi’s talent–and realizing that the myth is indeed reality.
Adam Scott, head of telecine, explains how he realized MJZ director Rupert Sanders’ vision of a comic book feel for the spot, “The source material was 35mm, HD video and data capture so the final ad had to seamlessly blend these different formats together. By adding a lot of contrast and sharpness to the material as a base layer and pushing the saturation of specific colors, the result was that the hero characters and football boots were made to stand out more prominently. Next, mattes were created to achieve layers of separation and enhance the two dimensional effect before finally giving the whole film an unusual golden brown hue that produced an unnatural look and complemented the cyan football kit and boots.”
“One of Them Days” and “Mufasa: The Lion King” In Tight Race For Top Spot In Weekend Box Office
The Keke Palmer buddy comedy "One of Them Days" opened in first place on the North American box office charts on a particularly slow Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
The R-rated Sony release earned $11.6 million from 2,675 theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, beating Disney's "Mufasa: The Lion King" by a hair. By the end of Monday's holiday, "Mufasa" will have the edge, however.
"One of Them Days" cost only $14 million to produce, which it is expected to earn by Monday. The very well-reviewed buddy comedy stars Palmer and SZA as friends and roommates scrambling to get money for rent before their landlord evicts them. Notably it's the first Black female-led theatrical comedy since "Girls Trip" came out in 2017 and it currently carries a stellar 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the marketplace was also quite weak overall. The total box office for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will add up to less than $80 million, according to data from Comscore, making it one of the worst Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekends since 1997.
"For an individual film like 'One of Them Days' this was a great weekend," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. "You can still find success stories within what is overall a low grossing weekend for movie theaters."
The Walt Disney Co.'s "Mufasa" was close by in second place with $11.5 million from the weekend, its fifth playing in theaters. Globally, the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel has made $588 million. It even beat a brand-new offering, the Blumhouse horror "Wolf Man," which debuted in third place with $10.6 million from 3,354 North American theaters.
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