Devil Wears Prada trailer an unconventional success

The moviemakers for "The Devil Wears Prada" were initially stumped on how to portray their film in a trailer. The comedy, which stars Anne Hathaway as a young aspiring journalist who finds herself working as a personal assistant to an imposing editor at a leading fashion magazine, was difficult to make seem like it wasn't "a makeover movie," said Pamela Levine, 20th Century Fox's co-president of marketing.

The movie, which was originally a best-selling novel by Laura Weisenberger (said to be based on the author's real life stint at "Vogue") is "so fresh and clever and fun and smart," Levine said. "It was hard to do something that didn't reduce it to less than that."

Finally Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, realized a great solution would be to show the opening scene of the film, where the lead character, Andy, goes looking for jobs - and leave it at that.

"It tells you everything you need to know about the movie without giving anything away, which is pretty unusual," Levine said.

When the trailer debuted in May, filmmakers were worried that the trailer might not fly. Levine wondered if the untraditional style would make sense to audiences, but they were soon reassured.

"We kept hearing, 'It's playing through the roof,' " Levine said.