Silver Surfer replica makes its way onto the London Eye; gets darker, more mature feature spinoff.

The Fox marketing machine is at it again! First an image of the Silver Surfer made its way onto the U.S. quarter, now a giant recreation of the surfing herald is perched atop the London Eye observation wheel, the popular London tourist attraction that features prominently in a scene from Fox’s upcoming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. [Source]

(You can view a clip of the fight sequence at the famous tourist attraction titled “London Eye” at the Yahoo! trailer page along with 4 other exclusive clips, dated June 12.)

Fox has gone out of its way with tie-ins and promotions for the FF sequel, which opens this Friday, yet they gave the film a PG rating in order to appeal to younger audiences — a decision that has been met with much outrage from the online fan community. (It’s 2005 predesessor Fantastic Four was PG-13.) According to the LA Times, Fox intends to win over the older X-Men franchise demographic with a darker-themed Silver Surfer spinoff, currently in development with J. Michael Straczynski penning the script.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Rise doesn’t disappoint and feel pretty confident that JMS will do a great job spinning off the Surfer! Check out here after the jump a photo we snapped of a FF:RotSS movie theater cardboard promo cut-out.

This shot was taken while we were visiting Phoenix, AZ, at the end of May. We went to see Knocked Up and this was in the lobby of the movie theater.