Breaking Product Placement News: News Is Product Placement

Megamind, and its brandlessness, is number one for a second weekend in a row, remaining the #1 movie in the U.S. and destroying Skyline and Morning Glory, the latter of which got an interesting review from one viewer.

DreamWorks' Megamind also beat Unstoppable, which means everyone should get ready for a week of "stoppable" jokes in reports about the box office numbers. But then, any film that takes an oxymoron as its title should expect what it gets.

From a product placement perspective, which is the only perspective Brandcameo knows, Unstoppable is notable for really only one reason: Fox.

The (based on real events) tale of two rail workers' heroic attempt to stop a runaway train is a perfect opportunity for the Twentieth Century Fox studio to throw a little product placement Fox's way.

Twentieth Century Fox works its Fox network partners into its studios films whenever possible, including Fantastic Four and its sequel, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Night at the Museum. Moreover, the studio also works in its foreign siblings, such as it did with Sky News in The Day After Tomorrow:

But Twentieth Century is by no means alone in this trend. One of the most prominent recent examples of this practice is the film update of the classic TV series, Land of the Lost. Produced by Universal Studios, Land of the Lost features, at length, the Today morning show. Today, of course, is owned and produced by NBC, the broadcast TV flagship in the NBC Universal conglomerate. See this clip from Land of the Lost below:

It's noteworthy that other studios without corporate media siblings do this as well, just with other products. Films in which Sony Pictures is involved, from Quantum of Solace to Step Brothers to Vantage Point (below) to the Resident Evil franchise to 2010's The Social Network, have become reliable places to spot numerous Sony Vaios, camcorders, TVs and other Sony-branded electronics.