This tongue-in-cheek ad, part of a broader based campaign, features famous–or is that infamous?–infomercial pitch man Billy Mays, spokesman for such “as seen on TV” products as Mighty Putty, OxiClean and the Awesome Auger.
In this series of spots directed by Ryan Ebner of bicoastal/international HSI Productions for Arnold, Boston, Mays extols the virtues of ESPN360.com’s live sports website. In “Office,” he in infomercial style boasts of what the live sports feed can do for the workplace. As we see live sports on a computer monitor at an office employee’s desk, Mays notes that the live feed can be seen anywhere as a super informs us, “Even in cubicles.”
Mays awkwardly crawls under a cubicle workstation to explain how live sports magically “travel” through an ethernet cable right into the back of a worker’s computer.
Cheesy testimonials follow, including one from a female office employee who notes that since she’s started watching the ESPN360.com website at work, her job has become “less soul crushing.”
This self-deprecating pitch from Mays, poking fun at himself and the infomercial genre, came from an Arnold team that included chief creative officer Pete Favat, executive creative director Roger Baldacci, creative director Mark St. Amant, art director Allison Hayes, copywriter Justin Galvin and producer Billy Near.
Michael McQuhae produced for HSI. The DP was Stoeps Langensteiner.
Editor was Lawrence Young of bicoastal Cosmo Street.
“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.
Writer-director Leigh Whannell's monster tale starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner did not enter... Read More