Now that WB and The Weinstein Company have resolved their litigation over the film’s title (a ridiculous and undignified set of court proceedings if ever there was one), the seemingly newly monikered “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” is pressing on with its marketing drive.
We’ve already had a really decent looking trailer, even if it is a little bit heavy-handed with the “you want to give this film lots of Oscars” tone and using the deceptively simple narrative structure of the decades spent serving at the White House by the eponymous butler to anchor an examination of the shifting nature of US race relations and civil rights during that time is an excellent move. Of course, these sorts of projects can fall into the “so worthy, so dull” trap, or they can scale dizzy heights of quality. We will see later on this year.
For now, here is a new TV spot, which covers much the same ground as the trailer, just in a little less detail. This seems destined to be an Academy Award contender next spring. We’ll know whether it is also any good in the course of the autumn as it rolls out its release across Europe.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSitFKWziHk’]
