Sony Pictures apparently bought up time on almost every network and cable station last night to sell Roland Emmerich's latest disaster film, 2012, to North America.

Costing around US $4 million, and catching an audience possibly four times the size of the Super Bowl, Sony has created a major marketing moment to air a two minute sequence from 2012 and convince North America to go and see it.

Well done Sony. Now what are you going to do for the rest of the world? Oh yes, just throw it out there with the usual marketing. After all there's not more people in the rest of the world than there is in North America, right?

They couldn't afford to market the film this way to the rest of the world, but I do have to wonder why they felt they needed to spend this kind of money to market it to the home viewer. Why couldn't they spend the money buying more trailer slots and traditional marketing to the cinema attendee? Why not spread the budget over the world and persuade more of the world wide audience to go?

Another question is if this film already has enough marketing. Just mentioning the previous Roland Emmerich films would be enough, and then showing some of the large scale disaster moments from the film would do it.

Regardless, they have done it, and North American audiences received a two minute sequence that ended in a cliffhanger which can be found online....well not where The Hollywood Reporter through Filmonic says it is, that gives “this content is currently unavailable”.

However the good news is that I've found the clip for 2012 elsewhere online, so let's just skip over that and look at this...

I've just watched it and it's good, bear in mind that it's cut down to make the sequence punchier for the short time it's on, but it's entertaining. The opening scene with the Governor of California is rather amusing, and John Cusack's character is none too polite, but it's an amusing opening.

It is amazing how they manage to keep ahead of the devasatation by inches, and their escapes do get a little more and more ridiculous, but then it's an Emmerich disaster film.