Marketing
Warner Bros. spent US$100 million marketing the film. Although Inception was not part of an existing franchise, Sue Kroll, president of Warner's worldwide marketing, said the company believed it could gain awareness due to the strength of "Christopher Nolan as a brand". Kroll declared that "We don't have the brand equity that usually drives a big summer opening, but we have a great cast and a fresh idea from a filmmaker with a track record of making incredible movies. If you can't make those elements work, it's a sad day."[69] The studio also tried to maintain a campaign of secrecy—as reported by the Senior VP of Interactive Marketing, Michael Tritter, "You have this movie which is going to have a pretty big built in fanbase... but you also have a movie that you are trying to keep very secret. Chris [Nolan] really likes people to see his movies in a theater and not see it all beforehand so everything that you do to market that—at least early on—is with an eye to feeding the interest to fans."[70]
A viral marketing campaign was employed for the film. After the revelation of the first teaser trailer, in August 2009, the film's official website featured only an animation of Cobb's spinning top. In December, the top toppled over and the website opened the online game Mind Crime, which upon completion revealed Inception's poster.[71] The rest of the campaign unrolled after WonderCon in April 2010, where Warner gave away promotional T-shirts featuring the PASIV briefcase used to create the dream space, and had a QR code linking to an online manual of the device.[72] Mind Crime also received a stage 2 with more resources, including a hidden trailer for the movie.[73] More pieces of viral marketing began to surface before Inception's release, such as a manual filled with bizarre images and text sent to Wired magazine,[74] and the online publication of posters, ads, phone applications, and strange websites all related to the film.[75][76] Warner also released an online prequel comic, Inception: The Cobol Job.[77]
The official trailer released on May 10, 2010, through Mind Game was extremely well received.[73] It featured an original piece of music, "Mind Heist", by recording artist Zack Hemsey,[78] rather than music from the score.[79] The trailer quickly went viral with numerous mashups copying its style, both by amateurs on sites like YouTube[80] and by professionals on sites such as CollegeHumor.[81][82] On June 7, 2010, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies.[83]
Inception and its film trailers are widely credited for launching the trend throughout the 2010s in which blockbuster movie trailers repeatedly hit audiences with so-called "braam" sounds: "bassy, brassy, thunderous notes—like a foghorn on steroids—meant to impart a sense of apocalyptic momentousness".[84] However, different composers worked on the teaser trailer, first trailer, second trailer, and film score, meaning that identifying the composer(s) responsible for that trend is a complicated task.[84]
Home media
Inception was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 3, 2010, in France,[85] and the week after in the UK and USA (December 7, 2010).[86][87] Warner Bros. also made available in the United States a limited Blu-ray edition packaged in a metal replica of the PASIV briefcase, which included extras such as a metal replica of the spinning top totem. With a production run of less than 2,000, it sold out in one weekend.[88] Inception was released on 4K Blu-ray and digital copy along with other Christopher Nolan films on December 19, 2017.[89] As of 2018, the home video releases have sold over 9 million units and grossed over $160 million.[90]
Putative video game
In a November 2010 interview, Nolan expressed his intention to develop a video game set in the Inception world, working with a team of collaborators. He described it as "a longer-term proposition", referring to the medium of video games as "something I've wanted to explore".[91]
10th anniversary re-release
Inception was re-released in theaters for its tenth anniversary, starting on August 12, 2020, in international markets and on August 21 in the U.S.[92] The re-release was originally announced by Warner Bros. in June 2020 and scheduled for July 17, 2020, taking the original release date for Nolan's upcoming film Tenet after its delay to July 31 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on movie theaters.[93] After Tenet was delayed again to August 12, the re-release was shifted to July 31,[94] before setting on the August release date following a third delay.[92]
