At a time when cable is in decline, audiences are split amongst a plethora of streaming services with and without advertisements, and ad blockers are all the rage among internet users, Hollywood is struggling to find ways to get their movie marketing in front of a captive audience.
That makes a movie like “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” a film guaranteed to get billions of people to turn their phones off and look at a big screen for hours, worth its weight in marketing gold for the trailers that run in front of it.
If you need proof of the impact trailers in front of an event film can have on pop culture, look no further than three years ago at the two key trailers that premiered in front of “Avatar: The Way of Water”: Universal’s Imax-exclusive trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Warner Bros.’ first glimpse at Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” that simply presented the film’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”-inspired opening.
This, of course, led to mass awareness that both films were releasing on the same day, leading to the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that defined cinema in 2023.
“Theaters are the last place left where you have an audience’s undivided attention, where they are most in the mood for seeing a movie and have their phones off,” said Disney distribution chief Andrew Cripps. “And the closer a trailer is to the feature presentation, the more likely it is to have a lasting impression.”
Now, with “Fire and Ash,” audiences who get in their seats at the scheduled screening time will be presented at least a half-hour of previews for the biggest films of 2026, including Steven Spielberg’s UFO film “Discourse Day,” the DC blockbuster “Supergirl,” and Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated “The Odyssey,” which will get a six-minute prologue in front of Imax screenings of “Fire and Ash.”
Even the distributors of “Avatar,” Disney, are quietly trying to take advantage of the Na’vi hype to build anticipation for their next holiday tentpole, “Avengers: Doomsday,” with a theatrically exclusive teaser promising the return of Chris Evans to the superhero franchise as Steve Rogers.
Of course, this is a lot of trailer for audiences to take in, and comes at a time when some moviegoers are starting to rebel against it. Studio marketing execs who spoke to TheWrap anonymously acknowledged that it has become a common trend for some moviegoers to take their time getting into their seat, knowing that with all the trailers and commercials set to play that their movie won’t start until at least 25 minutes after the slated showtime.
Some chains like AMC Theaters have even accommodated this moviegoing preference by listing the actual start time of the feature presentation on their ticketing sites.
So if you’re a studio, how do you work around this and make the trailers part of the experience? The first way is by making the trailers an event as much as the movie itself, as Universal and Imax are doing with an extended look at “The Odyssey.” Considering that hardcore fans of Nolan bought opening night Imax 70mm tickets a full year in advance, there will certainly be a portion of “Avatar” moviegoers who can’t wait to see an extended look at the first ever film shot entirely with Imax cameras.
The other route to get a trailer to stand out from the crowd is the old-fashioned way: make it undeniably memorable like the “Barbie” teaser. Universal is aiming for that path with the cryptic teaser for “Disclosure Day,” which features Emily Blunt being mysteriously possessed by an alien presence that is set to be exposed to the entire world.
Then there’s Billie Eilish’s upcoming concert film “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” which she co-directed with James Cameron and, like “Avatar,” will be presented in theaters in 3D. Insiders at Paramount say that they quickly decided that no form of marketing would be more effective to get the pop star’s fanbase excited than for those of them who buy a ticket to “Avatar 3” seeing a trailer that would fully demonstrate how Cameron would take his 3D filmmaking expertise and apply it to Eilish’s most recent world tour.
Screening a trailer in a theater is still important even in an age where most trailers are immediately available online as opposed to a pre-YouTube era where theaters were the only place to see them, leading to instances where movies like the 2001 film “Spy Kids” would get a small box office boost from teens just buying a ticket to see the trailer for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“You can see a trailer online, but the theater is the only place where audiences can get a full taste of what it is going to be like to see that film on opening weekend,” said Daniel Loria, SVP of Content Strategy for Boxoffice.
Trailers before tentpoles won’t help fill in the remaining gaps in the post-COVID box office, namely the largely underperforming specialty sector or the gaps in the release slate left behind by a lower volume of wide releases. But they are essential to the blockbuster machine that keeps the peak summer and holiday season rolling. For 2026’s biggest movies, the clock starts now on getting the masses in the seats.
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