News broke
today that a third trailer for Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight Rises, of Batman heritage, will be shown prior to
DC Comics/Marvel’s The Avengers,
which debuts May 4th. Because these
films are from different studios, it made me wonder who decides which trailers
are going to be paired with, and shown before, which films. I did a little digging to find out.
There are numerous forums
that discuss this very issue. Although I
did find some conflicting answers, the best
answer I found said that usually one or two trailers are attached to a
particular film, and are often shown immediately preceding the feature. Most of the time, these attached trailers are
from the same studio, so that they can promote one of their own movies due to
be released in the near future, although sometimes that isn’t the case. Obviously, that won’t be the case with TDKR’s trailer being shown before The Avengers. A Warner Bros.’ executive told Deadline's
Nikke Finke , “We see this placement as a good strategic decision. We
always want our trailers to be seen with films that people want to see — and a
lot of people will be going to The Avengers!”
The other trailers shown are chosen
by each theater. Therefore, most of the
time, if you happen to see the same movie at two different locations, you’ll
end up seeing a least a few different trailers before it.
Just to be safe, I wanted to
confirm these answers with noteworthy and reputable news sources (no offense to
the forum contributors, of course!). The
answer wasn’t by any means littered all over the web. I had to really search. But, the information I gathered did support
my earlier findings.
A lot goes in to deciding
which trailers to show before a movie.
The studio releasing the film typically has rights to two of these slots
and theater executives, in consultation with other executives from other studios,
select the remaining previews. They
usually try to select previews that target the audience in the theater at that
time. Therefore, they are more inclined
to choose romantic comedies to precede a romantic comedy, figuring if the
viewers were inclined to buy tickets for the feature film, they will have a
better chance of showing interest in an upcoming movie of similar nature than a
10-year old boy would, for example.
The
Hollywood Reporter released an article
a few years back that says studios basically now bribe theaters to play their
trailers. If theater operators are being
paid to play certain trailers, why wouldn’t they want to play as many as they
possibly can?
It seems as if it’s the general
consensus that more and more trailers are shown before movies these days. Now it makes sense why. In fact, in the article, the National
Association of Theatre Owners’ president, John Fithian, said, “We're seeing an
increased pressure to play trailers, but there is a limit to what the patron
can take in and retain. Playing trailers does help both distribution and
exhibition, so it's important to get it right." Despite this pressure,
NATO doesn't dictate rules to its members on trailer numbers, although they do
pose strict restrictions on trailer length- a trailer can only be 2 ½ minutes
long.
Studios and theaters manage to
shock or outrage their audiences, however, if they are not careful and don’t
follow the Motion Picture Association of America guidelines. Although most previews are edited for content
so they are appropriate for audiences of all ages, sometimes there is an
oversight, which causes an uproar.
For instance, Warner Bros. hastily
attached a raunchy
trailer for The Hangover Part II to PG-13 The Source Code, forcing them to immediately
pull the trailer from screens once the error was realized. Just in February, a London
theater accidentally screened trailers for The Devil Inside and Ghost
Rider: Spirit of Vengeance before a cinema packed with children and parents
to see Puss in Boots. Although theaters overseas follow different
guidelines, they are similar to that of the MPAA, so such an oversight proved
understandably traumatic to all parties involved. A similar mistake could easily happen here,
and I’m sure it has- on more occasions than one.
Red-band trailers are once again
becoming the norm, at least on the Internet, and all cinemas are likely to
follow. Regal Entertainment Group
decided to start
screening red-band trailers, trailers with R-rated content, again, despite
a temporary lapse by exhibitors and studios alike. However, since Internet viewers have found
these trailers to be accepted and
enticing, cinemas are beginning to follow suit. Anything that helps bring an audience to
watch a film is going to done by both the movie makers and the movie players.
All-in-all, movie marketing and
advertising seems to be a much more intense and important strategy than I ever
realized. Next time I’m sitting in a
theater, I know I will definitely be paying attention to the trailers, as I
always do, just for more reasons.
Although it’s obviously not an exact science, the more correlations I
can make between trailers and films, the more I hope to understand the
reasoning behind why exhibitors and studios selected the trailers they did.
But, I guess I really don’t have to
go to the movies to determine the reasoning behind the pairings. The answer
that really lies beneath, just as with so many other things, is money, which
stems from exposure and power.
