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Seinfeld Busy As You-Know-What

Mon., Oct. 29, 2007 2:23 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Jerry Seinfeld's starting to make bees look bad.

The industrious comic's all-out promotional effort for Bee Movie, opening Friday, will see him talking up his animated comedy just about everywhere this week: Monday, on Late Show with David Letterman; Thursday, on Live with Regis & Kelly and The Daily Show; and Saturday, as guest host of Talkshow with Spike Feresten.

The appearances follow Seinfeld's sit-down on Oprah, his guest-star stint on 30 Rock and his nearly two dozen Bee Movie-themed shorts produced for his old network bosses at NBC, which also airs 30 Rock. What's next? The man donning a big bee suit, and taking flight? Actually, he already did that. At Cannes, back in May. (And, for good measure, in an early trailer for the movie.)

To Mitch Litvak, president of the L.A. Office, an entertainment marketing firm (which was not involved in the marketing of Bee Movie), stars like Seinfeld who hit the road hard for their films aren't just valuable, they're invaluable.

"I think the public can see he stands behind the movie and believes in it," Litvak says.

An Adweek report on the Seinfeld promotional effort estimates the comic's busy-as-a-you-know-what routine has "contribute[d] tens of millions of dollars in marketing value." Not to mention tie-in Happy Meal toys at McDonald's.

If there's such a thing as too much Seinfeld, Litvak doesn't see it in this instance.

"He's not stretching," Litvak says of the Bee Movie blitz. "I think it absolutely comes across that he's proud of the movie he's in, and he had fun in it."

Seinfeld also had a lot of input in Bee Movie. He dreamed up the concept, cowrote the script (with Feresten, among others, hence that TV appearance), produced the movie and voiced Barry B. Benson, the talking winged insect who falls for a human florist who sounds just like Renée Zellweger (thanks to voiceover artist Renée Zellweger).

The A-list Bee Movie—it cost a reported $150 million to make—is Seinfeld's first major Hollywood venture since his TV alter ego ended up in a Massachusetts jail on the last episode of Seinfeld back in 1998 (out on DVD on Nov. 6, by the way, along with the rest of the final season).

According to Jeff Bock, of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, the film should start Seinfeld's big-screen career right at the top. Bock's predicting a $40 million-plus opening weekend, enough to best Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe's American Gangster, also opening Friday, and kick-start the holiday movie season.

Funny thing is, Bock thinks Seinfeld's swarm of activity probably will help Bee Movie's bottom line "a little bit," but that the movie would have been big even if its star had decided to spend the fall at home with his family.

"With these types of films, DreamWorks has solidified itself as one of the top [animation studios]," Bock says of the company behind the Shrek franchise. "Any film they come out with is going to be huge, no matter what."

Just in case, though, Seinfeld's also doing Larry King Live on Thursday.