creative-marketing

'Lars And The Real Girl' Embarks On Faith-Based Sex-Doll Initiative

seth · 10/11/07 11:58AM

With Lars and the Real Girl set to open in various markets over the next few weeks—it's the buzzed-about Ryan Gosling film about a lonely misfit deluded into thinking he's fallen in love with a mail-order silicone sex doll—producers are facing a marketing challenge: Sure, the concept alone might sell tickets to a built-in, RealDoll-enthusiast audience, who'll arrive opening night with high hopes of cheerleading costumes and raunchy, multi-doll orgies. But how to get the rest of America to warm to what is in actuality a mild and sweet-natured film about small town, churchgoing folk? One solution, employed by Hollywood in the past to varying degrees of success, is to target one's sex-doll movie directly to the Christians who'd most identify with its message of universal tolerance: