People in the world of movie publicity are debating the top-secret status Warner Bros. is trying to maintain over its forthcoming “Sex and the City 2” — the sequel to the 2008 spin-off of the HBO series.
The studio made everybody who worked on the film sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) that could levy $2.5 million damages on anyone divulging any plot elements in advance of the picture’s late May opening.
Two months ago, the model Noah Mills (below) gave an interview during one of his runway shows where he talked a little bit about his work on “SATC2” — he plays one of the new men in Samantha’s life (the hot to trot Kim Cattrall character).
Bloggers Ted Casablanca and Jezebel reported last week that Warner Bros. had come down on Mills like a ton of bricks (scaring him with that pesky NDA he signed). The model is in what the bloggers called “serious trouble.”
Up until this week, John Corbett was not allowed to disclose the fact that he reprises his role as Carrie’s old beau Aidan in the sequel.
Corbett was freed to mention this tidbit at a taping of a talk show last week only because the studio decided to include a shot of the Aidan character in the new trailer.
Some publicists believe the absence of well-sourced leaks over the past few months have thrown a wet-blanket over the “buzz” for “SATC2” — the chatter that you want to surround a movie long before it opens.
It is weird that Warner Bros. is treating the film as if it is a James Cameron science-fiction extravaganza with all sorts of plot twists. Fans of the HBO series and the first movie assume the newly married Carrie and Mr. Big will have their union tested (as it was again and again on the TV show) and that Samantha will get the steamiest sex scenes in the film.
Jessica Coen wrote amusingly about the NDA fracas on the Jezebel blog:
“Honestly, does anyone who’s going to see this movie actually give a rat’s ass about the plot of what is essentially a well-styled lady-orgy? For all we knew about the original’s storylines in advance, audiences still came out in record-breaking droves to see their beloved characters totter about a fantasy city while wearing impossible shoes and outfits raging from enviable to perplexing. Perhaps, for some folks, the question of what would happen in the film’s final 15 minutes kept their brains a little more engaged.”
“Sex and the City is not — and never will be — about entertaining audiences with a plot. The people who will see this movie — both the cultish devotees and those casually indulging their chick-flick needs — will see it no matter what they know beforehand. It seems silly, if not downright stupid, on the studio’s part to squelch any spoilers: The less people know, the less people are talking. Silly Warner Bros. — you should know that if you feed it enough, the Internet is the best hype machine money needn’t buy.”
Here’s a witty comment posted by “Maharani” in response to what Coen wrote:
“I already know the plot.
1] Everyone seems happy.
2] Maybe not so.
3] Something to look forward to!
4] Conflict
5] Vacation, everybody! Let’s go to some place where Charlotte won’t touch the food, and Samantha’s dress would feed a family for 10 months.
6] Montage/Sex scene/Everybody wears a dead reptile or a furry creature.
7] 2 hours are up, just in time for everything to magically come together.
8] Roll credits, thanks for your money, suckers.”
Another commenter – ‘BlueMorpho” – suggested that she had already seen the movie:
“Spoiler alert- Carrie finds The One Ring at Sotheby’s. She goes mad with power, and turns all of the one-shot episode boyfriends into flying monkeys. Miranda then leads an expedition to destroy Carrie, taking her through the vast wastelands of the flyover states. Just as Miranda is about the throw the magic shoe into the fires of Las Vegas, a magician flies down and resets everything. Then they all go to Dubai and find Curly’s gold.”
Another responder to Coen – “Massita” – proposed that “SATC” could be turned into a high-art indie film:
“If the studio decided to recreate ‘Invisible Cities’ with an SATC theme, that I would see.
Scene: The quartet wander past tall buildings, food stands and crowds. The whirligig of urban life swirls about them.
Carrie: This city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember.
They enter a shoe store, staring motionless at the wares.
Charlotte: Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think.
Samantha: The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.
The four walk down fifth avenue in the soft glow of the setting sun.
Miranda: What line separates the inside from the outside, the rumble of wheels from the howl of wolves?”
You’re right about the TV show having memorable plotting. The Viagra episode; the one where Miranda’s mom died; the episode in which Carrie liked the mom (played by Valerie Harper) more than the man she was dating, and many, many more told good stories I’ve never forgotten.
I disagree with Coen’s quote “SATC is not, and will never be, about entertaining audiences with plot.” True, the first movie had a weak plot, but that disappointed a lot of fans (me). The original HBO show had great plots, it was the only TV show to portray friendship and romance from the woman’s perspective in a justly complex way. The main character did selfish, unflattering things, the main love interest was an unredeemed asshole for 99% of the show, etc, but you got it, because the characters/stories felt real. Contrast SATC with Entourage – sure, both have wish fulfillment in the form of designer shoes and threesomes respectively – but Entourage never sustained compelling, believable plots to back it up, and it became a tired, parody of itself as a result. In SATC, the goodies were just icing.
I was an SATC superfan, but I wasn’t excited for this sequel at all, in fact I was dreading it, didn’t even want to watch the trailer. Until I saw Aidan. So maybe some plot teasers are ok