{"id":118726,"date":"2019-08-27T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/?p=118726"},"modified":"2019-08-27T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T14:08:20","slug":"studios-release-teasers-trailers-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/studios-release-teasers-trailers-early\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Studios Release Teasers and Trailers Too Early?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it possible to hype an upcoming blockbuster too much? Here’s what studios face when they release teasers into the market early.<\/h2>\n

You may be hard-pressed to remember a time when you only found out about a new movie by either seeing the teaser poster at the cinema, the trailer at the cinema, or reading an exclusive interview in a magazine or newspaper. I remember I only found out that Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker from seeing the cover of Empire Magazine<\/em> in a supermarket. In fact, I only found out that Warner Brothers had rebooted the Batman franchise as my local Blockbuster was giving free Batman Begins<\/em> VHS away as they were shifting to DVD only.<\/p>\n

Of course, in the early 2000s, movie forums were lively with discussions about upcoming movies. But, they were also areas of the internet you had to be a part of in order to read the information. Now, just by logging onto Twitter, you may see from the trends tab that an actor is set to take the mantle of a famous character for a film that is years away from release.<\/p>\n

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Image via Rudy Manahan (\u00a92013 SDCC).<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019re a movie fan, especially a fan of genre films, it\u2019s almost become a game to be in the know of just about everything to do with said genre. And studios lap this up. It has created a systematic loop of endless, free promotion. Each year at San Diego Comic-Con<\/a> you know that the newest Marvel & DC films are going to be announced, along with an abundance of trailers from other studios in attendance and likewise, every year at the Star Wars celebration you can be sure to catch a glimpse of the next iteration of the franchise.<\/p>\n

Getting the fans excited and talking about the upcoming feature has become part of the norm. People create twitter accounts, Instagram and Facebook pages to promote and discuss the film in their own free time, and studios need to get content out way ahead of release to allow the build-up and following to accumulate. Of course, we can\u2019t forget the YouTube channels who will in-depth analyze a 30-second teaser for over ten minutes. Content! Of course, this isn\u2019t always the case for releasing a teaser or trailer early; it may very well be part of the scheduled marketing.<\/p>\n

The problem is, this has become a double-edged sword? Social media and the internet, in general, has become quite unforgiving come 2019, and when studios publish unfinished content as early as possible, sometimes the reaction isn\u2019t positive. And as a result, we usually see a Tweet from the director like this one from Shazam<\/em> director David Sandberg.<\/p>\n

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(As a side note, the VFX in the Shazam<\/em> trailer weren’t awful. It just wasn’t as polished as the director intended).<\/p>\n

In 2013, Forbes<\/em> published an article titled Six Ways To Fix Movie Trailers<\/a>, and for the second point, senior contributor Scott Mendelson<\/a> said:<\/p>\n

Say what you will about the final product that is Green Lantern<\/em>, but the marketing campaign never really recovered from the too-early release of the first teaser back in November 2010. \u00a0The special effects weren’t remotely ready and the clip was filled with unfinished FX and shots of people running away from nothing. It was a terrible and cheap-looking initial preview for a very expensive film, and later better trailers did little to stem the tide of negative buzz\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026If you don’t have the goods, wait until you do. \u00a0We can be patient. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was from 2013, talking about a teaser released in 2010. And, almost a decade later, it still feels like a prevalent issue. It’s bizarre for a company to sell a product that cost them millions but to release a teaser that doesn’t showcase the final product.<\/p>\n

Case in point was 2017’s The Great Wall<\/em>. This video featured an unfinished CGI creature and was so severely mocked that Universal removed it from their Twitter account just a day later.<\/p>\n

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Fans and The Internet\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have to acknowledge how fans, or the internet as a whole, is very vocal and reactionary to media that does not meet their expectations upon first impression. It doesn\u2019t even take a few weeks for negative feedback to seep in; it\u2019s practically within the early few hours of publishing the material.<\/p>\n

There is perhaps a no more excellent example from recent times than Netflix’s The Witcher<\/em>. While possibly known best as a video game series, the Netflix dramatization is based on the best-selling Polish book series known as The Witcher Saga<\/em>. As such, fans were not to expect the version they know best from the games (which had its fair share of artistic deviations anyhow), but an adaption closer to the material from the books. In October of 2018, shortly after hearing that Henry Cavil would be filling the moniker role, Netflix gave us our first taster; a 20-second costume test of Henry Cavil donning the proposed costume for Geralt. Well, it took less than an hour for the internet to explode and start populating social media with memes poking fun at the somewhat less-than-great costume and wig.<\/p>\n

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The thing is, and as many loyal fans quickly pointed out in the comments across social media, it was only a costume test. The studio possibly wanted to see how his costume and hair rendered on camera. Or, maybe they just wanted to post something to get people excited. Whatever the reason, it was not the finished project. However, it certainly felt like the damage was done. It’s almost a sport to be cruel to a film if the initial impressions are negative. Still, come July we were treated to the first live-action teaser trailer.<\/p>\n