Your theory of duplicity sounds valid enough for me, so I have a question? How can we trust that the pictures and the videos were valid, and not a setup?This all smacks of Paramount's publicity department. They know the audience for this movie is internet nerds, so it's particularly important in this case, but any movie release will have an online/social media strategy nowadays, and "creativity" in guerilla marketing techniques considered a plus. (For starters, it's cheap.)
Leaking photos is good. Leaking photos and then manufacturing a BS controversy about how upset they are about the leaked photos is even better.![]()
Back to square one.
Not necessarily.
If the pictures are indeed of the actors (and not shopped), then there's money being spent on whatever it is they are being photographed doing. Having the actors stage fake production photos (if that's what you're saying) would cost money, and go against the idea of guerrilla marketing on the cheap. That's something you can't have both ways, so it's either real production and cheap to photograph for marketing purposes, or fake production and expensive to (stage and then) photograph for marketing purposes.