UPDATE: Variety has issued an apology for the poster, as apparently they originally printed it in their latest issue with a digital misprint. You can see the artwork as it is supposed to appear below:
Below is our original story.
It's probably insanely difficult if not impossible to find a person who finds themselves convinced to see a movie solely based on its poster, but the artwork can still possess great value. If done properly, it can catch the eye of a potential movie-goer, and then lead them to memorize the title for further research and consideration. What really defines a "bad poster" is its inability to clear even that low bar – and today we have a prime example of that from the promotion of Joe and Anthony Russo's upcoming film Cherry starring Tom Holland. What makes it so unsatisfactory? Check it out below, and see if you can actually decipher the title in that ridiculous font:
The intention of this Cherry poster (posted on Twitter by film reporter Chris Evangelista) is to be a message to members of different critics and filmmaker guilds to consider the upcoming film as a selection for Best Picture during this year's awards season, but where it manages to fumble the ball is in communicating the name of the movie. We get that it stars Tom Holland, and that it is an Apple Original Film, but if we didn't tell you what it's called, would you have been able to get that information from this poster? From our perspective it definitely looks a lot more like "Cherk" than "Cherry." Why does the "Y" have two stems?
This is an unfortunate bit of promotion is not only because the film does sound really interesting based on everything that we've heard about it. We first learned that Joe and Anthony Russo were cooking it up as their Marvel follow-up right in the midst of the production schedule for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and it sounds like it's going to feature a very different kind of performance from Tom Holland than anything we've seen before.
Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Nico Walker, Cherry stars Tom Holland as the titular character – an Army medic with PTSD who develops an opioid addiction after returning home from combat. In order to get the money he needs to keep feeding his addiction, he begins to commit a string of bank robberies.The strong supporting cast includes Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor, Michael Rispoli, Forrest Goodluck, and Thomas Lennon.
In addition to directing, Joe and Anthony Russo produced Cherry through their production company AGBO, and it was back in September that a deal was finalized to see Apple handle distribution. The film will be getting a limited theatrical run beginning February 26, 2021 that will qualify it for this year's awards season (hence the For Your Consideration poster), and then a couple weeks later on March 12, 2021 it will be available to stream exclusively on Apple TV+. When that release happens, just be sure to search on the site for "Cherry" instead of "Cherk."
