People tend to dread the trailers before a film, some even going as far as to do quick math and calculate how late they can arrive to the film showing to ensure they miss the trailers but make the movie. I think movie trailers are some of the better ads one could see in their day-to-day life, with the summarized version of the film and highly selected scenes they pack into five minutes.
I swear there is a new movie trailer every day, for some new movie that has a sect of humanity buzzing in anticipation. I can usually predict how these things go; a booming explosion, our beloved hero down on their luck, some tragic monologue played over top that gives a brief outline of how the viewer should expect the story to go once they sit their butts down in those comfy movie theater seats.
With the impending release of “Project Hail Mary” came the trailers teasing the film. Outlined within these trailers was an epic space adventure in which Ryan Gosling gets sent out to space and bumps into an alien, basically.
Now, “Project Hail Mary” was one of Andy Weir’s books before being turned into a film, which led to fans criticizing the decision to reveal Rocky the alien before the movie had even hit the silver screen, let alone watched in its entirety. The reason they provided was that Rocky had been a surprise when they read for the first time and by revealing it in the trailer, it took away the magic of Ryland Grace meeting Rocky for the first time.
But, had the trailers not shown the loveable Rocky, would as many people gone and seen the film? Sure, Gosling’s or Weir’s diehard fans would have filled some of the seats — me, included — but I doubt they would have broken the $510 million worldwide at the box office that the film actually did.
Conversely, on the other side of the coin, “The Drama” has managed to garner $62.2 million worldwide at the box office without giving away what their major plot twist is, simply alluding to the fact that there will be a plot twist. But, “The Drama” managed this stunning first two weeks in the box office by having their leading actors being two of the most well-known and well-loved actors. Robert Patterson and Zendaya’s fan bases did a lot of heavy lifting for this film, as the trailers alluded to very little about the film.
I think there is a certain amount of information that needs to be given away to draw people into theaters these days. With how easy it is to doomscroll your day away or to watch something from the comfort of your own home, the film industry has to work harder to allure folks into local AMC’s or Cinemark’s. Sometimes, in order to do so, you have to forfeit having a big plot twist to instead have theaters filled.
Even during the filming of movies, while the cameras are rolling and actors are probably still memorizing their lines, they run into spoiler issues. People always manage to find their way to movie sets, climbing over fences and peering around whatever the production crew might have put in the way of their viewing. Always leaked on Twitter are blurry, zoomed-to-the-max photos of movie sets and small blobs that people try to discern out as their favorite actors.
For the upcoming film “Sunrise on the Reaping,” this was a particularly bad problem. The photos that people managed to snag were all over twitter with no warning or spoiler alert for fans who maybe didn’t want to see it, but did want to scroll through Twitter for a little bit.
I do think there is an art in keeping big twists in movies secret. When watching any of the films of the “Knives Out” franchise for the first time, you would never be able to predict with any amount of certainty who’d done it. That’s part of the fun and what keeps people watching, but would people be watching if they knew nothing of the film?
I don’t think so. In order for a film to be seen in its entirety, you first have to convince people to settle down into the seats. I can understand people wanting to preserve the accuracy of their favorite book when it’s converted into a film or TV show, but they also have to understand that the film industry has to profit as well.
“Movie theaters are struggling,” is the widely accepted consensus. But, they aren’t struggling because movie trailers give too much away, they’re struggling because, seemingly, the film industry is struggling. We have got too many remakes or sequels or prequels being pushed out into our culture while creative and innovative films are being brushed under Hollywood’s rug. Already, in the highest increase in the first quarter domestic box office revenue since the pandemic, the film industry is up 23% compared to 2025. Optimism has been breathed back into the film industry and that is no doubt due to films like “Project Hail Mary” and “The Drama” despite their different tactics to get seats filled in the theaters.
