A movie's marketing campaign can make or break a flick. Even after an award-winning cast and crew has been assembled and months to years of planning and production wraps up, you've still got to get butts in the seats and eyes on the screen (and secure clicks / watch-hours in the modern mode of media consumption.) In this era of big-name franchises and "you're gonna watch it anyway" mentalities, a lot of marketing campaigns have slacked off, so it's nice to see some attention to detail here with the dual trailers for Noah Baumbach's upcoming Netflix film, Marriage Story.

While the bulk of the plot is right there in the title, the new narrative from Oscar-nominee Baumbach sees Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver playing a married couple whose relationship is on the rocks. That's not a new story, and neither is this a novel marketing approach necessarily, but it's enough to stand out from the pack and get your attention. The dual (and dueling) trailers for Marriage Story each tell a bit about one character from the other's perspective, accompanied by a set of conflicting character posters. And as an added bonus, each trailer uses Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long", though with different singers, and if you stagger the times that you start the trailers, the song plays out like a duet. The narration also mimics a conversation between Nicole (Johansson) and Charlie (Driver) despite the fact that they either wouldn't be telling each other these things or, at best, would be saying them in a marriage counseling session. I may be reading into these trailers a bit too much, but the marketing campaign got me to play both of them side by side multiple times, meaning that their job is already done. I'm sold.

Written and directed by Baumbach, and also starring Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever and Azhy Robertson, with Wallace Shawn, Martha Kelly and Mark O’Brien, Marriage Story arrives on Netflix this fall. Add it to your watch list now!

Here's the first trailer, from Nicole's perspective:

And here's Charlie's side of the relationship:

Here's the official synopsis:

MARRIAGE STORY is Academy Award nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach's incisive and compassionate portrait of a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.

For more on Marriage Story, be sure to check out these recent write-ups:

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