What Is a Movie Tagline?

The tagline is the line printed under a film’s title. It is not the logline, not a brand slogan and not a famous line of dialogue, and mixing those up is the usual mistake.

A short line that sells the experience

A tagline is a short text designed for dramatic effect. IMDb defines it as a short description or comment on a movie, displayed on movie posters or video covers to capture the essence of the movie and ultimately make you watch it. The aim is a memorable dramatic phrase that sums up the tone and premise of the film.

On a poster it works as an explanatory subtitle next to the actual title. Some taglines are successful enough to earn a place in popular culture.

Where you find one

The poster is the home of the tagline. IMDb accepts only the taglines that appear on original movie posters and direct-to-video covers, not advertising slogans. Original-language taglines are accepted if they come with a translation. Re-release taglines are noted as such: the UK 2003 re-release of Alien carried “The scariest movie ever made… just got scarier.”

Beyond the one-sheet, taglines often capture one-liners from trailers, in a joint effort to keep the movie front-and-center in a viewer’s mind. They can also appear in programming guides for film festivals. A tagline works like a verbal trailer. And the reach is wider than cinema: they are also found on the packaging of videos and music, because their enticing effect makes them an important part of how films and television shows are marketed.

Tagline, logline, slogan, headline

People mix these up, so here is the short version. A logline is the elevator pitch that identifies what a movie is about and why it will be interesting. It sells the film to producers. A tagline sells it to audiences, and unlike a logline it follows no formula. The full comparison, with a Jaws pair, is on the tagline vs logline page, and the people who write the line are in who writes movie taglines.

A headline is something else again. It is linked to the information it presents and is dropped when the information changes. A tagline is related to the entertainment piece and can appear on all the information about it. If the sentence sits next to a logo as an integral part, it is likely a tagline.

The word itself is American. In the U.K. the same thing is an end line or strapline, in Germany it is a claim, and in France it is a signature. A tagline is also a variant of the branding slogan, and the famous brand versions, Nike’s “Just do it” and Apple’s “Think different,” condense the whole consumer experience into five words.

Lines you probably know

Every film has its own, so there is no single answer to “what is the movie tagline?” These are among the best known, quoted as they are printed in the sources:

Read down the table and three habits show up. Some lines are directives: The Fly tells you what to feel. Some are questions: Ghostbusters asks who you gonna call. Some are promises about the experience, like Superman’s.

Four of these have their own pages: “In space no one can hear you scream”, “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” and “You’ll believe a man can fly”. The poster wording of Alien has no comma; Wikipedia’s version adds one. More are in the famous movie taglines section, and the craft pages sit in the writing section.

One film can carry more than one line. Poltergeist’s primary tagline was “They’re here,” a line with the strengths of brevity and intrigue that came straight from the film’s dialogue and, on posters, summoned the creepy trailer to mind.

The older ones

Some of these work because of the puns, and some are unrelated to the plot altogether. The takeaway: the older lines state a situation or a promise in a full sentence, while the modern ones in the table above are shorter and lean on a single image or order. A tagline can also speak directly to the plot, or to the experience of watching the film.

What makes one catchy

There is no rulebook, because a tagline has no formula. There are habits, though, and most good lines have two or three of them. Start with the experience, not the claim: say what the viewer will feel, and keep it short enough to read at a glance.

Longer ones can work, but not usually. Minions used two words, “Uh oh.”

A tagline needs to communicate the experience of the movie, not what it means or is trying to do. Don’t make claims; describe experiences. The Superman line promises what the viewer will feel. The boasts that fail are collected in how to write a movie tagline.

“Be afraid” gives the audience a directive, a good way to snare interest, and The Fly’s line became a phrase of its own in everyday speech. Taglines also often use puns or turns of phrase, like the play on the number in the title of The Magnificent Seven. Fight Club’s tagline was three words that do not belong together. The Matrix kept a mystery open with its question “What is The Matrix?”, which cannot be answered without the rest of the movie.

The Jaws 2 line became a template, quotable for just about anything that carries a sense of ominous danger ahead; its story is on the Jaws 2 tagline page.

Write many drafts first, because bad ideas can yield good ones.

The tagline must work with the poster, the title and the film. A horror tagline that only calls the film very horrifying is uninteresting.

One film, several lines

A film rarely has just one. Many movies use more than one tagline in a campaign, and a campaign needs several, each with its own goal, such as generating interest, offering more information and then selling tickets. The Matrix had several, among them “The matrix has you” and “Welcome to the real world”. The Fellowship of the Ring used “The legend comes to life,” “Middle Earth comes alive” and “Power can be held in the smallest of things”. The Blair Witch Project had “Everything you’ve heard is true” on top of its main line.

Lines also change over time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind began with the longest of its taglines, and later versions were reduced to “We are not alone.” Alien’s first trailer and teaser poster carried “A word of warning…” before “In space no one can hear you scream” took over.

Lines also vary by market. In the U.S. the Suspiria tagline ended “Are The First 80” because the original American prints were trimmed so the film could get an R rating.

Who writes them

Copywriters and marketing teams write taglines, and a few have names. Barbara Gips wrote the Alien line; her story is on the Alien tagline page. Trailer makers share the work: Andrew J. Kuehn, who developed the first Jaws trailer, is credited with the Jaws 2 line, and his view of the job was that a trailer has but one goal, to draw audiences out of their houses and into a theater. Who writes movie taglines covers both careers and how an agency picks one line from thousands.

Older than you think

Selling a film with a line is not new. The 1920 teaser campaign for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the poster at the top of this page, used the German line “Du musst Caligari werden!”, “You must become Caligari!”. Another early example: “Garbo talks!” promoted Anna Christie.

A tagline is not a line of dialogue

Keep the two lists apart. Dialogue is ranked by the American Film Institute in its 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. That is a line spoken in the film. A tagline is written for the poster. People mix them up, and the Jaws 2 page is the standing example.

A tagline can still earn a place with the film: the Library of Congress’s notice on the 2002 Registry selections uses Alien’s line to describe it. The Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the Registry each year, as the bulletin on the 2001 group explains, and AFI ranks Alien the seventh greatest sci-fi film.

Ready to write one? Go to how to write a movie tagline; for the difference from a pitch line, tagline vs logline.