Who Decides which Trailers to Show Before a Movie?

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.