Going to the mall, part 2

Quick follow up to my DAWN OF THE DEAD post. In the original script, James Gunn called out a bunch of brand names for the mall stores that our luckless heroes find themselves trapped in.

I'm not sure how it would read if they had done this. My suspicion is that they didn't have the money to get the kind of clearances needed. See, we're in an age where brand damage is seen as a real thing. And if a brand shows up in a movie, well, you can be sure that it's not the bad dudes who will be utilizing that brand's products.

We're a long ways away from BLACK SUNDAY, which showed the Super Bowl and both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys as the center point of a depicted terrorist attack carried out from the Goodyear Blimp of all places. I guess people were hungry for any kind of filmic advertising at that point. Because now? That seems totally inconceivable. Brands are precious. They need to be protected and managed properly, allowed to grow and thrive, not merely wasted for a few seconds of frisson on the screen.