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In January 2010 the first teaser trailer to the film was released, winning and alienating potential audiences in equal measure mainly due to one scene. During those 90 seconds it introduced the characters (including Cooper without a shirt on), it had the iconic theme, it had the van, it had explosions, but it also had a tank… in midair… shooting down two reaper drones. That sequence became such a talking point that I’m surprised the M8 AGS doesn’t get its name on the poster. Carnahan spoke out about the reaction in Empire Magazine, saying, “Look, if you don’t like the idea of a tank falling out of the sky and shooting at a plane, then this movie’s not going to be for you.” The thing is, people had already made their decision on whether or not they were going to see the film based on that audacious action shot alone, with some potential moviegoers already turned off.

As the release date drew ever closer, the marketing became more insane. A few months later in May, stars Cooper, Biel and Copley appeared at Nascar Coca Cola 600 promoting the film, with “that” van driving down the racetrack. In June, just days before the film opened, Cooper, Jackson and Copley also appeared on WWE Raw (with Jackson even doing a little fighting in the ring). During the US premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the stars drove down the red carpet in a tank! Also during the week before its release, a succession of clips from the film appeared online. By making sure that The A-Team was absolutely everywhere, it looked like Fox had a film that would have no trouble reaching the top spot and becoming a $100 million earner at the US box office... except it wasn’t.

Two days before the film opened, Nikki Finke of Deadline published an article citing that there were a total of 11 writers that worked on the film, yet only Skip Woods, Joe Carnahan and Brian Bloom were credited. It also went into detail about how Alex Young of Fox lost control of the film, calling him “one of the most disliked movie execs.” It mentioned how he almost destroyed the film during its development, be it lying to writers, failing to get back in touch with them after they’d handed in a draft and that he even rewrote pages himself. That this appeared to happen before Carnahan got involved would suggest that Young’s supposed actions probably didn’t really have an affect on Carnahan’s film. Nevertheless, a week later Carnahan retaliated and called Finke an “idiot,” saying, “It’s unfortunate that she knows nothing and she just spits out venom.” Adding a little credence that not everything on the page made it in, in Empire magazine Neeson said of the shoot that, “the script changed on a daily basis. Sometimes that’s the problem with studio blockbusters. The writer and director have a slant on it and then it has to go through confirmation from the studio.”

The A-Team opened on June 11, 2010 alongside another relic of the 1980s, The Karate Kid. Both films were expected to do reasonably well, with many predicting The A-Team to win the weekend with around $30 - $35 million. Instead the film landed at #2 with an opening weekend take of $25.6 million. The Karate Kid opened on top, with $55.6 million. The A-Team spent five weeks in the top ten and finished with $77.2 million at the US box office. A take of $100 million overseas gave the film a worldwide total of $177.2 million. As the tagline said, “There is no Plan B.”

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