Coming Soon: The Movie You Want To See. But First: 30 Minutes Of Trailers

Have you ever noticed yourself watching trailers in a theater and thought, “Wait, what movie did I come to see?” After 20-25 minutes of movie trailers, I often forget the feature film. This is especially hard for us RunPee Peeps because we’re often there to watch a movie that we’re not actually excited to see. But we can’t be the only ones, right?

That got me thinking: How do they decide what movie trailers precede each movie? Obviously, there’s a theme. If you’re there to see a horror movie, you’re going to see a lot of trailers for upcoming horror movies, or trailers for action movies if you’re watching a Marvel Movie, etc. But there’s more to it than that—much more.

Historical Note

Why do we call them movie trailers if they come before the movie? That’s because back in the day, like 1913, they trailers really did come after the feature film ended. The first recorded trailer was when marketer Nils Granlund cut together rehearsal footage of an upcoming Broadway musical and used it to push ticket sales. A year later, Granlund created a trailer promoting an actual movie—starring Charlie Chaplin.

Who Decides What Trailers Preceed A Movie?

This decision has two primary interests, and both are usually in sync with each other. There’s the production studio that is releasing the movie. They want to show trailers for other movies that they are releasing. And of course, there is the movie theater themselves that want to promote movies they plan to show in the future. When there is disagreement, there is compromise, unless Disney is the production company, in which case they get what they want or they won’t let that chain have access to a future release.

Suppose you’re watching a movie produced by Universal; they will stipulate that they want a few trailers of their upcoming movies that are in a similar genre. And those trailers ofter, although not necessarily, come first. Then the theater will have trailers for upcoming movies not affiliated with Universal that they want to show. And of course, sometimes a production company might pay a theater to preview a movie.

The trailers before a movie may change during a movie’s theater run. There may be more trailers shown before a blockbuster movie on opening weekend than there would be on the following weekend. Everyone knows the theater will be close to capacity so there’s a higher value for showing a trailer, especially right before the feature movie begins. Theaters can make some extra cash by selling that trailer spot off. But then, a week or two later, that trailer is removed from the queue.

The Most Common RunPee Feature Request

There is no question, that the most common feature request I have gotten over the years is to let users know how long the previews will be before each movie. Now you know that it’s really impossible to fulfill this request because the number of trailers will be different from one theater to another, and may change even for the same movie of the course of its theatrical release. The last thing I want is to get an email from a RunPee user complaining that they missed the beginning of their movie because our previews length was wrong.

If you really want to optimize your time, the best advice I can give you is:

• Try to see movies at the same theater so that you have experience with their preview selection. For instance, I know that at AMC, I’m going to get about 2 1/2 minutes of AMC: We Make Movies Better crap before every single film. (Note: thank the stars they finally edited the Nicole Kidman crud down to about 1/3rd its original length.)
• If you’re seeing a blockbuster movie on opening weekend, you can bet that there will be some extra trailers in the queue.
• If you’re seeing any movie many weeks or months after its initial release, the number of trailers has probably decreased.
• If you’re seeing an artsy/independent movie, the number of trailers will probably be fairly short.

Which Trailers Pair To Which Movies?

As I mentioned above, the production company and theater both have a voice in this decision, but how do each decide exactly which trailers to show? People in the advertising world have to make themselves sound smart, so they came up with the quadrant system. The quadrant system divides cinema audiences into four groups: women under 25, men under 25, women over 25 and men over 25. That’s the basic division, but hopefully there is more nuance than that. For instance, if you’re watching a romance movie then it’s probably not a bad idea to throw in a trailer for an action movie with the expectation that a lot of couples are watching the movie together and the guy will be able to say, “Hey, I saw this chick-flick with you. Next time let’s watch Insert Action Title Here.”

The funny thing is that I have access to the Peeple’s Poll data that breaks down how people rate movies by gender and age and I can say definitively that it’s a myth that men like action movies more than women. It may be true that more men go to see action movies, but women consistently rate them higher. Plus, some movies blur the lines between the two genres. Was the first Deadpool movie an action movie with romance, or a romance movie with action?

How Many Trailers Do You Think Is Exceptable?

I think it’s generally accepted that there are too many trailers these days, especially now that we can watch trailers so easily on YouTube when we want to.

Assuming a movie trailer is 2 – 2 ½ minutes long, how many trailers would you like to see before a movie?

— RunPee (movie app/film hub) (@RunPee) April 14, 2024

Trivia

There are commercials and trailers before movies in China, but when the movie ticket says a movie starts at 7:00 PM it starts at exactly that time. You have to arrive at the theater early if you want to see the trailers.

I’m curious to know how this works in other countries. If your model differs from the US, please let us know below in the comments.