This book is for The Birds
"Despite the explicit marketing tie-in ("From the studio that brought you Shrek"), both [Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron] are traditional hand-drawn cel animation with nothing to connect them to Shrek in look or in spirit."
— Steven D. Greydanus, Decent Films
When a creator is maybe not prominent enough to carry a title on their own, but their work is popular and/or widely loved enough to mean something, the promoters of their latest project will highlight their track record to sell this new thing to people. Sometimes it does give the audience some clues as to what they might expect — a signature line, a Creator Cameo, other tropes said creator is known to utilize. Exceedingly common in literature, with the cover frequently advertising something akin to "from the New York Times bestselling author of Insert Book Here." Other common promotions include "by the bestselling author of the book that was made into a successful movie" or even "by the author of the bestselling franchise, of which this book is the next installment".
Can lead to Director Displacement in films and television when the "creator" is a producer — as this name immediately becomes associated with the work, people not bothered to look any further than promotional material will only know them as the creator of it and perpetuate both the displacement and the future of works being promoted by their name as they become more spoken of.
Sometimes may be used as a way to Polish the Turd.
May take the form of:
- From the writer/director/creator of...
- From the studio that brought you...
- From the producer of... - Some people take this as a sign that they had nothing else to sell the audience on than "the guy who said Yes to this film also said Yes to this other film".
- From the Award Winning creator of... - For when they really want to highlight the creator's prestige.
- From the maker/s of... - They did something important on that film, had a little involvement with this one.
Compare Billed Above the Title (where the Creator's name is displayed more prominently than the title of the work), He Also Did (for when the work is incredibly out of genre for the Creator, but it isn't necessarily advertised), Product Placement (where products are advertised by their inclusion in a work), In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It (where the Creator's name is part of the title or Tagline), Preview Piggybacking (where a work advertises an included preview for a much more anticipated work). Contrast Competing Product Potshot.
Examples:
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Straight Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Funimation uses the "from the studio" variant in quite a few of its trailers, which is odd as it merely licenses and translates released works from a variety of companies.
- They marketed Toriko as being "from the studio that brought you Dragon Ball Z and One Piece". All three are action series adapted from Shonen Jump manga, and have had non-canon crossovers with each other in manga and anime format.
- 4Kids Entertainment did something similar while it was running, primarily using Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!.
- The newest release of Revolutionary Girl Utena announces on the box that it's from one of the creators of Sailor Moon: Kunihiko Ikuhara.
Comic Books
- The Ultimates: In-universe, Nick Fury hired Stark for the Ultimates for his incredible Iron Man armor, but also because of his huge popularity, and how some of it could be borrowed by the Ultimates initiative.
Films — Animation
- David Kirschner
- Advertisements for the film Once Upon a Forest said it was "from the creator of An American Tail". This was possibly done to mislead people into thinking it was a Don Bluth film, which it wasn't; David Kirschner produced both films (and came up with the initial idea for An American Tail).
- Some of the trailers for The Pagemaster also said "From the creator of An American Tail" at the beginning. It was also produced by Kirschner.
- Many second-rate CGI movies are often labelled as "from the producers of Shrek". That producer in question is John H. Williams, who also produced Valiant, Happily N'Ever After and Space Chimps.
- Coraline was promoted as "From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", leading many people believe that the movie is by Tim Burton. Actually, it's Henry Selick who directed both movies, and Burton was only the producer of The Nightmare Before Christmas and had no involvement in Coraline.
- DreamWorks Animation movies are often advertised this way, referencing previous DreamWorks All CGI Cartoons, Shrek being usually one of them.
- Ads for Pixar movies use the "From the studio that brought you..." version of this trope. It's typically Toy Story (their first feature-length movie) and their most recent successful movie they put on the poster.
- Disney Animation Studios in its early years would advertise films as being "Walt Disney's Latest Picture", and in the decades after Walt's death would play up the brand in lieu of specific film association. Frozen was their first film to begin associating specific movies in its posters ("From the creators of Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph") and Big Hero 6 began Disney's habit of association in the actual trailers ("From the creators of Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen").
- Played for laughs in the first trailer for The LEGO Batman Movie, where the trailer lists every live-action Batman movie ever made (by Warner Bros., anyway)... and The LEGO Movie.
- Adverts for Chicken Run said it was "from the creators of Wallace & Gromit".
- The posters and trailers for the Happy Heroes movies have a tendency to advertise them as being from the same person who created Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf.
Films — Live-Action
- Edgar Wright
- Sightseers is "From the makers of Hot Fuzz, Paul & Shaun of the Dead". Of course, Wright only produced this film, not wrote and directed it. Note that The World's End isn't on that list because, though complete, it hadn't been released yet and that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World isn't because the film was targeted at British audiences, the genre of the film is much more like the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, Rule of Three, and the marketing department may have wanted to noncommittally suggest that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost would be in it.
- The DVD case of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World also reminds you that it's "from the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz".
- The tagline poster for Mama says that it's "Presented by Guillermo del Toro, Creator of Pan's Labyrinth". What they mean by that is that del Toro is only the Executive Producer.
- Advertisements for The Interview said it was "From the Western capitalist pigs who brought you Neighbors and This Is the End".
- John Landis. The poster for An American Werewolf in London proclaimed "From the director of Animal House...A different kind of animal."
- Battleship was proudly declared as coming "From Hasbro, the company that brought you Transformers", despite both films actually being made by separate studios. note
- When the movie remake of ''Land of the Lost'' came out in 2009, Universal Studios released the 1970 movie adaptation of H.R. Pufnstuf, on DVD, which contained a blurb on top of the front cover stating, "From the Producers of Land of the Lost" (Even though Sid & Marty Krofft completely created both series).
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- The reboot of The Lone Ranger had trailers boasting that it was from producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski, the people behind Pirates of the Caribbean. But instead of stating that outright, they just show the Pirates logo.
- Trailers for King Arthur (2004) said "From Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of Pirates of the Caribbean".
- The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) put Michael Bay as the most prominent name in the marketing, despite being only one of a half dozen producers, because his name was also the most notable.
- The film Child 44 is being promoted as having been produced by Ridley Scott.
- The 2015 Fantastic Four film's trailer and poster promote "From the studio that brought you X-Men: Days of Future Past", though oddly not emphasizing that they shared a writer and producer (Simon Kinberg).
- Deadpool 2 was advertised as being "From the studio that killed Wolverine."
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Prior to the release of The Avengers, Marvel Studios was mainly known as "the studio that made Iron Man", a connection they very much played up in the marketing for Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. Commercials for the former film featured the bit where S.H.I.E.L.D. agents mistake the Destroyer for a Stark Industries weapon, and commercials for the latter played up Howard Stark's role in the creation of Captain America, with Dr. Erskine's "Now, Mr. Stark!" line featured prominently.
- After the release of The Avengers in 2012 it became common for Marvel movies to play up the connection with that movie, particularity in commercials for origin films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man (with the latter film name dropping the team in the trailers). It wasn't until Doctor Strange (2016) that the films started playing up the franchise as a whole in marketing as opposed to any individual past film.
- The 2015 film Jem and the Holograms (2015) says in the trailer that it's "From the studionote that brought you Pitch Perfect and the director of Never Say Never."
- Top Secret! is "From the makers of the original Airplane!", followed by a footnote stating "(Not the Wright Brothers)".
- The DVD cases of both Django and The Inglorious Bastards — the originals from the 1960s — have the directors' names (Sergio Corbucci and Enzo Castellari, respectively) in tiny font, but say "The film that inspired Quentin Tarantino" for Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds respectively in massive letters.
- The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure had the possibly-unique "from the marketing visionary who brought you Teletubbies". The movie currently holds the record for worst box office returns for a widely released movie.
- The first trailer for A New Hope said "20th Century Fox and George Lucas, the man who brought you American Graffiti now bring you...
- The trailer for Truth or Dare (2018) advertises the film as being "From the producer of Get Out (2017), The Purge and Happy Death Day".
- The trailer and poster for The Darkest Minds advertise the film as being from the producers of Stranger Things and Arrival.
- Trailers for Mortal Engines advertise the film as being from the filmmakers of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
- Mallrats: "What else did you expect from the director of Clerks?"
- Beetlejuice: "From the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure..."
- David Cronenberg examples (note that his films often have used In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It in promotional campaigns from Dead Ringers onwards) include:
- Videodrome was promoted as "A shocking new vision from the creator of Scanners".
- Dead Ringers's promotional campaign played with this in that it positioned the film as the Spiritual Antithesis of Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) (since it's more Psychological Thriller than Body Horror). For instance, the trailer features the narration "From David Cronenberg, who in The Fly made the fantastic real...now, David Cronenberg makes reality the ultimate fantasy." It also Recycled Trailer Music from the previous film.
- A Dangerous Method's poster referenced A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, both of which also starred Viggo Mortensen.
- Army of the Dead: The trailer has "From Zack Snyder - Director of 300, Man of Steel and Dawn of the Dead".
- Reminiscence is advertised as "From the co-creator of Westworld".
- Peninsula is known in some territories as Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula.
- The British DVD of the gross-out horror film Braindead has "From the Director of Lord of the Rings PETER JACKSON" at the top of the cover. Braindead is very much by Jackson, but it was also made before he hit the big time.
- Bullet Train - “From the director of Deadpool 2.” That director being David Leitch, of course.
- The trailer for Men mentions that director/writer Alex Garland also directed Ex Machina and Annihilation (2018).
Literature
Authors whose other works are advertised:
- Frank Edward Arnold: "Mecanica" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "City Of Machines" and "The Twilight People" as previous works by Arnold.
- Isaac Asimov:
- The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories: The Ballantine publication points out that Dr Asimov is also the author of bestselling book The Robots of Dawn.
- Earth is Room Enough: One of the taglines for the 1960 Panther cover references The Currents Of Space and The Caves of Steel.
"Starkly realistic stories by the author of 'The Currents of Space' and 'The Caves of Steel'"
- Foundation (1951): The 1960 Panther edition points out that Dr Asimov also wrote The Naked Sun.
- Nine Tomorrows: The Del Rey cover from 1985 includes a Tagline pointing out that Dr Asimov is also the author of the national bestseller Foundation's Edge.
- "The Secret Sense" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Homo Sol" and "Trends" as previous stories by Dr Asimov.
- "The Ugly Little Boy": For the Tor Double-Sided Book, the Tagline also credits Dr Asimov as the author of Prelude to Foundation, which he had first published the year before.
- Janet Asimov's Mind Transfer: Beneath the author's name, the cover points out that she is the co-author of The Norby Chronicles and Norby Robot For Hire.
- Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov's The Norby Chronicles:
- The cover of the first Omnibus edition, The Norby Chronicles, mentions that Dr Asimov is also the author of The Robots of Dawn.
- The cover of the second Omnibus edition, Norby, Robot for Hire, mentions that Dr Asimov is also the author of Robots and Empire.
- The cover of the third Omnibus edition, Norby Through Time and Space, mentions that Dr Asimov is also the author of Prelude to Foundation.
- The back cover of all three Omnibuses mention that Janet Asimov wrote The Second Experiment and The Last Immortal while Isaac Asimov wrote The Robots of Dawn and Foundation's Edge.
- Terry Brooks: The novelization of Hook proudly advertised on the top of the cover, "From the Bestselling Author of The Druid of Shannara". The first printing even had the Druid title in BOLD ALL-CAPS and almost as large as the actual Hook title; subsequent printings shrunk the blurb down to just the top edge of the cover.
- John L Chapman's "Crystal Worlds" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Lunar Gun" and "Anothers Eyes", previous works by Chapman.
- Cecil Corwin: "The Reversible Revolutions" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Thirteen O'Clock" and "The Fly-By-Nights", previous works by Corwin.
- Cressida Cowell's The Wizards of Once: On the cover, just above the author's name, is the tagline — "From the Author of How to Train Your Dragon".
- SD Gottesman: "Return From M 15" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Dead Center" and "Nova Midplane", previous works by Gottesman.
- Syd Hoff: Sammy The Seal contains the line "by the author of Danny and the Dinosaur" on the bottom of the cover.
- Erin Hunter: The three series Seekers, Survivors, and Bravelands are advertised as "From the author of the #1 nationally bestselling Warriors series" right on the covers. For Survivors, fans consider this rather misleading: while Warriors and Seekers have shared the same group of writers and editors under the pen name Hunter for a decade, Survivors has an entirely new team and isn't connected to any of the people responsible for the other two series.
- Clifton B Kruse: "Planet Leave" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "The Incredible Visitor" and "The Battle of Chang-Da", previous works by Kruse.
- Robert W Lowndes: "The Martians Are Coming" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "A Green Cloud Came" and "The Abyss", previous works by Lowndes.
- John Norman:
- Ghost Dance: The cover's tagline labels Norman as "Author of the Gorean Saga".
- Gor:
- Blood Brothers of Gor: The 1982 cover by DAW Books includes the tagline of "The Eighteenth book in the Tarl Cabot Saga".
- The 2010 covers for this series contain "Gorean Saga * Book #" as the first line for every sequel.
- Time Slave: The cover contains a tagline saying, "New for Gor fans", despite the fact that this book has nothing to do with the Gorean Saga.
- Hugh Raymond: "The Last Viking" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "He Wasn't There" and "The Vanguard", previous works by Raymond.
- Fred Saberhagen wrote the Novelization of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula. He offered to also write the novelization of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein just so the cover could say "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: by the author of Bram Stoker's Dracula."
- Basil Wells's "Biped" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Rebirth Of Man" and "Winged Warriors", previous works by Wells.
- Donald A Wollheim: "The Man From The Future" was published in Cosmic Stories referencing "Planet Of Illusion" and "Bones", previous works by Wollheim.
Works by an editor/author, but another author is advertised:
- Masters of Horror and the Supernatural: The Great Tales: Stephen King, one of the biggest names in the Horror genre, wrote the introduction, and this gets advertised on every front cover.
- Science Fiction Verhalen: One of covers for volume 4, containing stories by John Wyndham, has a tagline that references Wyndham's other stories, such as The Chrysalids, The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, Chocky, and The Kraken Wakes.
Live-Action TV
- FOX's summer 2015 game show BOOM! is being advertised as "from the creators of Wipeout."
- Ryan Murphy's Scream Queens is "from the creators of Glee and American Horror Story." All three do share the same crew, nearly in its entirety, as well as a mix of the casts of both shows.
- Oobi was advertised as featuring "furless" Muppets due to its vast amount of connections to Sesame Street.
- Early promos for The WB's Unhappily Ever After said that "The creator of Married... with Children picks up where marriage leaves off."
Music
- News articles about I AM I's lead singer, ZP Theart, tend to introduce him as DragonForce's ex-singer.
- Recent no-man albums tend to include a sticker that says: "no-man are: steven wilson (porcupine tree) and tim bowness". Which is ironic considering that Wilson considers no-man his main project.
Tabletop Games
- Card games published by International Games Inc. and Mattel all have the inset "From the Makers of Uno" on the game's box. While most games are unrelated to Uno, it does help distinguish Similarly Named Works, such as the game DOS (the official sequel to Uno) from DOS!: Twice the fun of UNO (a word and drawing card game).
Toys
- The packaging of the first wave of Hero Factory sets had a label boasting "From the makers of BIONICLE!"
- The Grossery Gang have labels on the top of their pegs with "From the makers of The Trash Pack!" on them. Before their official release, both The Trash Pack and Shopkins YouTube channels aired crossover promotions for The Grossery Gang.
Video Games
- Dynasty Wars's North American flyer proudly promotes it as "from the creators of Ghosts 'n Goblins and Black Tiger".
- Rage (2011)'s box points out that it's "from the creators of Doom and Quake".
- Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure was originally promoted with this caption: "By the Oliver Twins, authors of Grand Prix Simulator!"
- The debut trailer for The Outer Worlds points out that its a game from the creators of the original Fallout and the development studio who worked on Fallout: New Vegas. Justified as the game is a Spiritual Successor to Fallout, only in outer space. It was also seen as a jab at the company who currently owns the Fallout brand.
- The box to Little Dragons Café mentions that it was "created by Yasuhiro Wada, the imagination behind the original Harvest Moon game". Wada did create the first title in that series and he worked on the franchise until he split off during the DS era. In Little Dragons Cafe's case, at least it is very much in the spirit of Harvest Moon (but without the dating element).
- Ninja: Shadow of Darkness is advertised as "from the creators of Tomb Raider", that is Core Design (although the teams for each were mostly different).
- The original Digimon virtual pet toys had text on the packaging saying they're from the makers of Tamagotchi, which Digimon was developed as a Spear Counterpart to.
- The American cover art for Puyo Puyo Fever's GameCube port displays a symbol in the corner saying it's from the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Web Original
- Brand Sins is advertised as being "from the a**holes that brought you CinemaSins".
- Dr. Havoc's Diary Is advertised as "from the guys who brought you The Most Popular Girls in School".
Western Animation
- When Danny Phantom got its first promo, the creators of Fairly Oddparents were mentioned.
- This was this reason that Father of the Pride caught the ire of the Parents Television Council; ads for the show cited its studio as the creators of Shrek, which they felt would mislead kid/family audiences into watching a show that was most decidedly not aimed at such.
- The promos for Milo Murphy's Law say it's "from the team that brought you Phineas and Ferb".
- The teaser trailer for The Dragon Prince advertised the series being from the head writers and director of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Paradise PD advertised itself as "from the twisted minds that brought you Brickleberry".
- Tuca & Bertie's trailer states that this show is "from the team that brought you Bojack Horseman".
- Ada Twist, Scientist was advertised as "from the same creators as Doc McStuffins and Vampirina", since the show is headed by Chris Nee.
Parodies:
Fan Works
- The first paragraph of Super Paper Mario X starts with a "Creator of" example, like a trailer for a movie, but a Record Needle Scratch occurs halfway through, with the author assuring that "this is not a movie."
Films — Animation
- Parodied by the 2007 Spanish-Italian animated film Donkey Xote. The film had a lot of similarities with Shrek, bordering on plagiarism. Its creators lampshaded this, promoting the film as "From the producers who saw Shrek".
Films — Live-Action
- Seltzer and Friedberg advertised Date Movie, among others, as produced by "two of the six writers of Scary Movie."
- The trailer for Dudley Do-Right: "From the creator of George of the Jungle, and the star of George of the Jungle, and the acclaimed director who saw George of the Jungle.
- A trailer for Deadpool 2 advertises it as "from the studio that brought you 27 Dresses and The Devil Wears Prada" - i.e. films that are very much the opposite of a action superhero comedy.
- The second trailer takes things further by adding "from the studio that killed Wolverine".
- The first trailer for Free Guy, another Ryan Reynolds action-comedy, begins with one of these... but instead of naming other 20th Century Fox films, it names the movies of studio owner Disney instead (namely Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King), and ending it with "Twice".
- Mad Max: Fury Road advertising used the director's name only, as he didn't really have any similar films with which to draw favorable comparisons. Fans, on the other hand, were happy to point out that the movie about Australian madmen driving the awesomest weaponized cars this side of Gorkamorka was "From the director of Happy Feet and Babe."
- The Happytime Murders was "From the studio that got sued by Sesame Street", a reference to the fact that Sesame Workshop sued the filmmakers for the tagline "No Sesame. All Street."
Live-Action TV
- Not Necessarily the News once ran a clip of fireworks set to orchestral music while an announcer delivered a bombastic introduction one word at a time. "From! The makers! Of! Police! Academy! 2! Comes!" Cut to an all black screen, music stops. "Nothing of importance."
- Mock the Week, during a "Scenes We'd Like To See" round, with the category being "Unlikely film trailers":
Rob Beckett: From the director of Batman V Superman, a heartfelt letter of apology for wasting our time.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: The Peasant's Quest preview advertises it as being "from the company that made that game Trogdor, and that game Rabbit Algebra". (Trogdor was already a playable game on the website, but Rabbit Algebra was made up as a joke just for this trailer and was never playable.)
- In How It Should Have Ended's Man of Steel Superhero Cafe short, Batman points out how prominently Christopher Nolan's name was in the trailer, especially since this is the only reason they really list producers. Superman insists that's not why people are excited.
Web Original
- Honest Trailers will frequently lampoon this.
- Examples include describing The Lord of the Rings trilogy as "From the director of the King Kong Universal Studios ride", or Prometheus as "From the director of all those Russell Crowe movies you never saw, and the writer of Lost's unsatisfying final episode".
- M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth is "From the director of... Oh God, not him again."
- Shrek is "From the studio that brought you the DreamWorks Face."
- Cinderella uses The Triple: "From the studio that brought you Snow White, Fantasia and The Story of Menstruation.
- The Jungle Book is "From the author of Rikki Tikki Tavi and The White Man's Burden? (Uh oh.)"
- The trailer for Ghostbusters (2016) does this with Sony's recent business mishaps.
Narrator: From the studio that just got hacked by North Korea, lost creative control of Spider-Man, might lose James Bond, and couldn't even keep Adam Sandler happy,note comes this surefire hit to put them back on track.(cut to a montage of various negative comments on a video of film's trailer)Narrator: Oh no.
- During the Midnight Screenings of The Avengers, while joking about how Battleship flaunts "From the company that brought you Transformers", they come up with a better tagline: "From the language that brought you Hamlet".
- Discussed by Yahtzee Croshaw in his series Judging By The Cover during his critique of the poster for Fantastic Four (2015).
Yahtzee: I love it when film marketers have to fall back on "from the studio that brought you". The usual starting point in the quality-by-Association Fallacy is "from the director that brought you", followed by "from the producer that brought you", which is desperate in itself, and this is the final resort: a small handful of the guys involved in the creation of an unrelated good thing work in the same building as us, and you never know, maybe we caught some talent off the toilet seats."
Western Animation
- Futurama
- The episode "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" parodies this by having its opening caption read "From the Network that Brought You The Simpsons." (They could have made a big deal out of Matt Groening's name being on the cover of both shows, but they offer their then-shared home on Fox as the key similarity instead.)
- "A Head in the Polls" has "From the Makers of Futurama".
- Parodied in Family Guy, in an unaired cutaway gag from season 9, "Road to the North Pole".
Stewie: [to Brian] You tried to trick me! Like those commercials for upcoming movies.
[cut to Stewie watching TV in the living room]
Announcer: This summer, from the guys who brought you Superbad comes a hilarious new comedy.
Stewie: Uh, I hate when they do that. Which guy? You know it could be the writers or the guys in the wardrobe department, they don't specify.
[Stewie changes the channel]
Announcer: From the studio that brought you Wedding Crashers.
Stewie: Uh, who cares? It's sure a broad association.
[Stewie changes the channel]
Announcer: From the species that brought you Talladega Nights.
Stewie: Oh what, humans? Who else is making movies?
Announcer: From the same molecular elements that brought you Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Stewie: What?
Announcer: ...and air!
Stewie: Fuck off! - Parodied in the "Uncle Grandpa Babies" segment with "From the network that brought you Adventure Time and Steven Universe."
- Robot Chicken: A sketch from "Things Look Bad for the Streepster" features a trailer for The Smashing Games, which says it's "From the studio that brought you Mario Is Missing! and Donkey Kong Hockey.
