State Farm recently launched a new marketing campaign featuring Gotham City's heroes and villains. It's hard to understand why it wasn't released during the Super Bowl (rumour has it the LA wildfires might have delayed the campaign), particularly as many have praised its movie-quality visuals.
If the insurance company hoped that the spot would go viral, it's worked, and State Farm is on everyone's radar, as a result. In the promo, Batman - and "Bateman" - encounter many of Gotham's greatest supervillains, with the designs for characters like The Joker, Poison Ivy, and The Riddler singled out as being better than those we've seen in movies like The Batman and Zack Snyder's Justice League.
Thanks to makeup artist Eliza Mollie Till and props builder Dan Crawley, we have several new behind-the-scenes photos. From the comic-accurate Poison Ivy to the teeth that gave the Clown Prince of Crime his iconic smile, the work that went into this promo is staggering.
Till has also confirmed that Batman was portrayed by Nicholas Hayner, a.k.a. Nick Filoiali'i. Before suiting up as the Dark Knight, he was a stunt performer on Captain America: Civil War and counts The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 among his credits.
We're sure DC Studios will have taken note of the positive reception State Farm's Batman commercial has received, though we expected James Gunn's DCU to deliver a comic-accurate take on Gotham and its many rogues, regardless.
As we explained earlier this week, the commercial was developed in collaboration with Highdive, with additional agencies supporting the 360-campaign including FleishmanHillard, Infinity Marketing Team, OMD, Optimum Sports, The Marketing Arm Warner Bros. Discovery, Creative License and ThisMachine.
The campaign features a diverse array of top talent, including Jason Bateman as "Bateman," Grammy-winning artist SZA as Catwoman, streaming sensation Kai Cenat as a Gotham City citizen, and popular content creator Jordan Howlett (a.k.a. Jordan the Stallion) as Commissioner Gordon.
"For the first time ever, Batman and Bateman share the screen in a hilarious showdown that highlights the differences that set State Farm apart from its competitors," reads the official description of the TV spot. "Because when it comes to protection, you don’t just want coverage - you want State Farm."
You can watch the promo in its entirety by clicking here. As for those newly revealed behind-the-scenes photos, scroll through them in the Instagram galleries below.