No shits were given in the making of this poster.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a movie poster as embarrassingly bad as the latest one for Magic In The Moonlight. Even covers for direct-to-DVD movies are usually better than this. And this is not a direct-to-DVD movie. This is a Woody Allen film scheduled for a theatrical release next month. And it’s being released by Sony, hardly a tiny, independent studio with a limited budget. One would think they could afford to hire a professional artist instead of whatever unpaid intern put together this train wreck.

The poster looks like it was created from a free template someone found with a Google search. That off-white color is awful. The background photo is blurry as hell. Emma Stone appears to be slightly transparent as the edge of the background photo is bleeding through her right arm. The same is true for Colin Firth’s left arm, though it’s not quite as obvious. Firth was clearly photographed separately as he’s trying to look in the general direction of where Stone should be, but his gaze is going right over her head. They also appear to have been shot under different lighting conditions. Spelling all of the names correctly seems to be the only thing this poster did right.

I’m sure someone will suggest this is a fake poster some kid threw together, and I’d be inclined to believe you. But this was posted in a news article on Moviefone.com! That doesn’t necessarily guarantee its authenticity (how many times have we seen news outlets fooled by The Onion), but it does make it more likely that this is indeed legit. I really hope Moviefone has been punked and this is not real. But if it is, I hope more effort was put into the movie than the poster.