New Badass Foreign District 9 Posters!

Dan Koelsch,

Update: Thanks to commenter Dan Birchall, we now know the posters are for the film’s Thailand premiere.


Film Totaal, a Dutch film blog, posted a bunch of posters for upcoming and recently released films today. Check out the site for the full list, but these two posters caught the eye of forum member “andyboy35”:


District 9



District 9



These District 9 posters seem to be promoting the film’s September 17th release in Slovenia, and they look awesome. What’s interesting is how they seem to be promoting the film in that part of the world. Sony seems to really push the action-packed, almost Transformers-like, experience of District 9 over the social commentary. This isn’t too surprising, since most American films released overseas that tend to do better are in the action and sci-fi genres. Dialogue-heavy films tend to get lost in translation.


The imagery of Transformers 2 or even Terminator Salvation is clearly visible in these mech suit-focused posters. However, the posters skew how the suits are featured in the film. There is not an army of mech suits like first poster shows, and the suits are not tens of feet tall, like the second poster implies. Also, the suits are not onscreen that much to begin with.


The difference in promotional techniques for films based on the local culture always fascinates me, and this is no exception. The film in America was promoted first based mostly on the message, then gradually started pushing the action as the film was closer to release. I’d love to see how else the film is being promoted overseas, including if any of the viral makes it’s way over there. I think a viral campaign in South Africa itself would be fantastic.


District 9 is currently out in theaters in the US.

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Comments (11)

  1. That’s definitely not from Slovenia, it looks like some Asian language. Slovenian, like most other European languages (including English) uses the Latin script.

  2. Well the guy who posted it thought it was Russian, so who knows? I’m not a language expert. The only September 17th release I know of is in Slovenia.

  3. The second poster gives a clue – the year is 2552, not 2009. So right away (or after a few minutes in Google) you know you’re dealing with a country with a lot of Buddhists (Buddha was born in 543 BC).

    A few more seconds with Google shows that the majority-Buddhist countries are Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Laos, and Vietnam.

    The big cosmopolitan market for movies in that region is going to be Bangkok, so my guess is this is a dubbed release there, and IMDB is mostly aware of the English-language releases and a few other European ones.

    I’m not really sure, though – I don’t read Thai, and the poster lettering is so heavily stylized as to not look Thai to a non-Thai reader. 🙂

  10. I can’t read the second poster, but on the first one, it says “From the director of The Lord of the Rings and King, Kong Peter Jackson.”
    As I suspect you all know, Peter Jackson was the producer, not the director.

  11. WOW! These are awesome! Looks like a District 10 Alien Take over! MUHAHAHAHA, sweetness, i wish they sold these at my local blockbuster

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