The Posters of The Mist

At the beginning of the movie The Mist, character David Drayton (Thomas Jane) has a painting he was working on ruined when a tree comes crashing into his studio during a violent thunderstorm. This ruined painting, meant to be the main image of some fictional movie poster, means that Drayton will have to ask for a deadline extension to repaint his work. He's concerned, since most movie posters these days are done relatively quickly via Photoshop. He says, "They could whip up some bad Photoshop poster in an afternoon, they do it all the time…"

What I find interesting is that rather than having a painted poster be the official poster for The Mist, a poster created in Photoshop was used.

Not only that, but a different Photoshop image was used for the cover of the special edition DVD. There's more action outside the windows and the angle out the windows is higher.

And at least one poster for the Korean (?) version of The Mist was a Photoshop hybrid of the two images. (Except here, for some reason, the windows don't end with a curve at the top.)

A painted image was used for the cover of the re-release of the Stephen King novella the movie was based on. This image was also released as a giveaway poster for the San Diego Comic Con as well.

Not that I'm complaining or anything – I actually like the Photoshop and painted posters for The Mist.

By Bert Ehrmann
3/30/2008