A Man Is Living Inside a Billboard Over the Sunset Strip Promoting Netflix’s The Last House

Drivers and pedestrians along Sunset Boulevard near Selma Avenue keep doing double takes this week. High above the traffic sits a billboard that looks less like an advertisement and more like someone’s actual living room, complete with a couch, curtains, shelves of books, and a bay window facing the street. Inside that elevated room, roughly 30 feet off the ground, a man in a robe has been going about his day in full view of everyone below. Netflix built the setup as a promotion for its new sci-fi thriller The Last House, which began streaming on August 7.

The film follows a family who become confined inside their home by an unknown force. The parents Greta Lee and Wagner Moura are forced to make due with depleting food & water supplies, meanwhile trying to keep their two kids alive while this hidden enemy outside bars their road to freedom. Director Louis Leterrier has framed the plot around a very simple yet unnerving question that screams out at you: “How long can you survive?” The question is also plastered on the film’s billboard.

An artist moved into the billboard on Thursday, August 6th, and planned to stay until Saturday, August 8th. On the inside, he’s just living his normal life in an exceptional situation. The room is now fully furnished and climate-controlled, with a comfortable couch, some books on the bookcases (one of which is titled “At Home”), a deck of cards, a globe, some plants, and enough space for him to roam around without feeling confined. The air conditioning keeps the room cold and comfortable when the rest of Southern California is boiling in the summer heat. Don’t get me wrong, he does take breaks, so its not like hes stuck up there constantly, but the overall visual impact is rather remarkable, as he looks like just another guy going about his daily business dangling high over one of LA’s busiest streets from the sidewalk.


The entire stunt is then framed by Netflix as a point-by-point echo of the film’s fundamental idea. In the film, the Delgado family is unable to leave their home, however in West Hollywood, a lone individual is merely hanging out in a living room tied to a billboard over Sunset Boulevard, waving at people and writing letters for those outside to see. The contrast between the two is intentional, since the people on film are dealing with very real issues of scarcity and being unable to leave, whilst the man on the billboard has a perfectly comfy living room, some food to gnaw on, and a front row seat to the activity on the Strip. That stark contrast is what keeps the overall promotion memorable long after a standard poster or internet ad would have faded.