In a move set to shock the world, it has been announced that Priceline.com is going to kill off its popular Negotiator pitchman, played by William Shatner. The Negotiator will meet his fiery death in an ad slated to begin airing on Monday, and may be part of their ad campaign during the Super Bowl.
Shatner has been pitching for Priceline for 14 years total with 5 of them as the Negotiator. The Priceline team have decided to give the Negotiator a Viking funeral, sending him plunging off a cliff in an exploding bus.
The Associated Press reports:
The Negotiator rescues panicked vacationers from a bus teetering on a bridge’s railing. “Save yourselves—some money,” he says, handing his cellphone to a passenger as he and the bus tumble into a dry creek bed. A violent explosion, real and computer-generated, follows. “I’m in grief mode,” a droll Shatner said by phone Wednesday. “It’s not the first time I’ve had an iconic character die off.”
Shatner is, of course referring to Captain James T. Kirk, who also died falling off a cliff (not bad for a guy who loved to show off his freeclimbing ability). According to the article this isn’t just the death of a character, but the end of Shatner’s time with Priceline. Shatner will be going to Broadway next month in his one-man show “Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It.”
UPDATE: Priceline has released the commercial on the web:
On a very personal note, let me just say that the Priceline commercials never got better than when they decided to take a meta turn and cast Leonard Nimoy as the “new” Priceline pitchman.