Super Bowl Sunday has historically catered to dude-bros, but advertisers definitely acknowledged football’s female viewers last night. In between the Patriots’ victory over the Seahawks were trailers for Insurgent, Fifty Shades of Grey, Pitch Perfect 2, and Inside Out — all films with female protagonists that will primarily rely on girls and women for ticket sales.
Lionsgate cut costs exponentially by airing their Insurgent spot during the pre-game with a clip featuring Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Jeanine (Kate Winslet). The footage is special effects-heavy and plot-light, emphasizing the mass appeal of the Divergent installment. While the teaser doesn’t reveal much about the narrative, it does demonstrate that Insurgent will be visually spectacular. We see Tris smashing through glass, descending great heights, and tackling Kate Winslet(!). Insurgent opens March 20.
During the game, we got more footage of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) in a new teaser for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey. Specifically, we see Christian broach the topic of his “play room” with naive Anastasia, who asks if he’s referring to his “Xbox and stuff” (heh). The teaser capitalizes on the remarkable success of the E.L. James novel on which it is based, and the historic number of views the first trailer received — the implication being that, much like the Super Bowl itself, Fifty Shades is a cultural event that isn’t to be missed come February 14.
Anna Kendrick made headlines for live-tweeting the Super Bowl, but the Into the Woods actress also made an appearance on the telecast — in a commercial break, that is. A new teaser for Pitch Perfect 2, Elizabeth Banks’ directorial debut, aired shortly before Katy Perry’s half-time show. The clip features plenty of singing and dancing, and the Green Bay Packers — who are famously diehard fans of the first Pitch Perfect — doing both (while being ogled by Rebel Wilson, who admits that she wouldn’t mind being the “ham in that man sandwich”). The Barden Bellas will be singing their way to theaters on May 15.
Meanwhile, Pixar opted to show us more of Inside Out during the Puppy Bowl, a more kid-centric broadcast. The special look at the film shows the various emotions from Inside Out reacting to the Puppy Bowl — Joy reacts joyfully when a puppy gets a touchdown, Disgust is disgusted when a puppy poops on the field, etc. Inside Out comes out June 19.
