10 Movies With Cool Posters and Bland DVD Covers

Posted by on January 2nd, 2007   Filed under: DVD and Blu-ray, Features, Posters and Marketing

As an avid DVD collector, I have a real soft spot for creative and well-designed DVD packaging. In the digital age, it’s true that physical media is becoming almost irrelevant, but I still think the visual artwork that accompanies a film is crucial, not just in selling a movie, but also in how we think about a movie too. It may seem silly or trivial, but DVD covers and movie posters affect how we feel about a film, both before and after we watch it.

Needless to say, it annoys me when studios don’t put any effort into DVD artwork. It especially annoys me when the movie has a beautiful, thought-provoking poster, and then somehow the DVD ends up looking like some shitty fan-made Photoshop job. In a lot of cases this happens because the studios believe that the stars sell the film, so they simply slap a bunch of massive head shots on the cover and call it a day. I’m not disagreeing that stars can help sell a movie, but I think that a slick, visually appealing piece of art (with the stars names on it) is much more likely to make a DVD jump off the store shelves. (Don’t even get me started about the ugly additional French language titles required on DVD packages in Canada!)

To further illustrate my point, I’ve attached 10 great movie posters with the corresponding sub par DVD artwork. Now I’m no graphic design guru, but how many of these DVD covers actually tell you anything about the movie? Do you prefer the DVD artwork over the posters? I’ve seen plenty more offenders out there, so feel free to chime in with some of your own disgraceful DVD hack jobs. Images after the jump.