http://youtu.be/gq4_NLjA5nQ
Those who tuned in at noon today either on E! or to the film’s official Facebook page were probably expecting to actually see the teaser at noon as promised. What occurred instead was an hour of red-carpet material more like what you see for an actual movie premiere as opposed to a premiere for a 153-second teaser trailer. My memory may be faulty, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this for a trailer before. This is well beyond simply not premiering the trailer in a theater or tying it to a tangentially-related television show. This is milking it for all it’s worth, with the film’s stars (pretty much everyone all of the series vets of note save Dwayne Johnson, although perhaps I missed him) doing the red-carpet routine and fans on the sidelines being interviewed by soft-ball reporters. Again, this is not a film premiere, but rather than “premiere” for a trailer. Yes, (to be read in your best Patrick Stewart or John Hurt impression) I’ve frankly never seen anything like this before… not for a trailer. You may-well be seeing the future of tentpole marketing playing out before your eyes.
Putting aside the red-carpet hi-jinks for a moment, the trailer itself is a surprise. No, not that there is a new teaser for Fast & Furious 7 (now called Furious 7), but that we are getting one this soon. The last three Fast and Furious installments (Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6) all held onto their marketing cards, if I recall, until the Super Bowl, where they dropped crowd-pleasing spots that were among the most buzzed-about movie commercials to air during their respective years. Over the last few weeks, the Fast and Furious 7 Facebook page has been dropping brief videos and images leading up to today’s trailer debut. I think the manner in which this trailer debuted is yet another example of how the manner in which a trailer is revealed as much so-called “news” as the trailer itself. And today we have what amounts to a red-carpet premiere for a teaser trailer.
Now to be fair, a trailer itself isn’t news, it’s a piece of
marketing designed to sell the film in question. In the proverbial olden
days, you saw these trailers for the first time in a movie theater or
perhaps a couple days early on Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood.
The Internet eventually became the go-to place to see trailers early,
albeit often in very slow-to-download and very small video files. Of
course today pretty much every trailer drops online before it debuts in
theaters, even in circumstances where I argue it would help a studio to
keep said trailer offline for the opening weekend. And any time a
trailer actually debuts in theaters or even debuts on television (think
the 50 Shades of Grey teaser from back in July), it arguably counts as news.
Obviously Furious 7 (as it’s now called) has no incentive to stay offline as the two big films this weekend are Interstellar (Viacom and Time Warner Inc.) and Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney ), but there was a time when Universal (Comcast Corp.) would have held onto the trailer until November 14th and debuted it in theaters-only over the opening weekend of Dumb and Dumber To. But now not only is Universal dropping the trailer two weeks before their big holiday release, they are doing so in a way that is basically turning the trailer itself into a mini-event. Said trailer release events are now par for the course, but it is an interesting (and somewhat swift) change from times gone by.
Obviously Walt Disney would have preferred to actually launch their Avengers: Age of Ultron teaser trailer after this Tuesday’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as planned, but of course said trailer got leaked online a full week ahead of schedule. And then of course the trailer itself was “news” twice that day, once when the bootleg went live and again when the official version, along with a new poster, went live a few hours later. And of course last Tuesday’s ABC show ended with a new scene from the film along with a slightly different version of the same trailer, which made “news” all over again.
Thanks to the pervasiveness in which movie bloggers cover mainstream (and especially superhero-centric) movie news, what should have been one blog post for many news sites turned into three based on a single teaser trailer. Now I’m sure Disney would have preferred that the leak not happened on general principle, just as I’m sure they weren’t thrilled about rumors regarding Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr. Strange dropping one day before their big “Phase 3″ announcement event the next day, but most publicity is good publicity so I can’t imagine they were too upset with the results. That’s of course what has caused this “teaser for the trailer” trend over the last four years, as the movie sites will post about the teaser for the trailer and the trailer itself. Two news bites for one piece of content, with both the writers and the studios winning out accordingly.
Those who tuned in at noon today either on E! or to the film’s official Facebook page were probably expecting to actually see the teaser at noon as promised. What occurred instead was an hour of red-carpet material more like what you see for an actual movie premiere as opposed to a premiere for a 153-second teaser trailer. My memory may be faulty, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this for a trailer before. This is well beyond simply not premiering the trailer in a theater or tying it to a tangentially-related television show. This is milking it for all it’s worth, with the film’s stars (pretty much everyone all of the series vets of note save Dwayne Johnson, although perhaps I missed him) doing the red-carpet routine and fans on the sidelines being interviewed by soft-ball reporters. Again, this is not a film premiere, but rather than “premiere” for a trailer. Yes, (to be read in your best Patrick Stewart or John Hurt impression) I’ve frankly never seen anything like this before… not for a trailer. You may-well be seeing the future of tentpole marketing playing out before your eyes.
Putting aside the red-carpet hi-jinks for a moment, the trailer itself is a surprise. No, not that there is a new teaser for Fast & Furious 7 (now called Furious 7), but that we are getting one this soon. The last three Fast and Furious installments (Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6) all held onto their marketing cards, if I recall, until the Super Bowl, where they dropped crowd-pleasing spots that were among the most buzzed-about movie commercials to air during their respective years. Over the last few weeks, the Fast and Furious 7 Facebook page has been dropping brief videos and images leading up to today’s trailer debut. I think the manner in which this trailer debuted is yet another example of how the manner in which a trailer is revealed as much so-called “news” as the trailer itself. And today we have what amounts to a red-carpet premiere for a teaser trailer.
Obviously Furious 7 (as it’s now called) has no incentive to stay offline as the two big films this weekend are Interstellar (Viacom and Time Warner Inc.) and Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney ), but there was a time when Universal (Comcast Corp.) would have held onto the trailer until November 14th and debuted it in theaters-only over the opening weekend of Dumb and Dumber To. But now not only is Universal dropping the trailer two weeks before their big holiday release, they are doing so in a way that is basically turning the trailer itself into a mini-event. Said trailer release events are now par for the course, but it is an interesting (and somewhat swift) change from times gone by.
Obviously Walt Disney would have preferred to actually launch their Avengers: Age of Ultron teaser trailer after this Tuesday’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as planned, but of course said trailer got leaked online a full week ahead of schedule. And then of course the trailer itself was “news” twice that day, once when the bootleg went live and again when the official version, along with a new poster, went live a few hours later. And of course last Tuesday’s ABC show ended with a new scene from the film along with a slightly different version of the same trailer, which made “news” all over again.
Thanks to the pervasiveness in which movie bloggers cover mainstream (and especially superhero-centric) movie news, what should have been one blog post for many news sites turned into three based on a single teaser trailer. Now I’m sure Disney would have preferred that the leak not happened on general principle, just as I’m sure they weren’t thrilled about rumors regarding Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr. Strange dropping one day before their big “Phase 3″ announcement event the next day, but most publicity is good publicity so I can’t imagine they were too upset with the results. That’s of course what has caused this “teaser for the trailer” trend over the last four years, as the movie sites will post about the teaser for the trailer and the trailer itself. Two news bites for one piece of content, with both the writers and the studios winning out accordingly.
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