(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Movie marketing is an intriguing business. These days, it’s more important than ever for studios to entice audiences to leave their humble abodes and buy tickets at the cinema, because prognosticators have been predicting the death of the theatrical movie business for years.
Posters, TV adverts, merchandising, social media, and attempts to go viral have all become commonplace in movie marketing. However, I’d argue that trailers are more vital than ever in selling a film to an audience. When executed well, they can drum up fevered levels of interest. Equally, though, when executed poorly, they can kill a film’s chances of success.
What happens when trailers outright lie to the audience, though? It’s not uncommon for trailers to feature moments that don’t actually appear in the finished films or play out slightly differently than is suggested in the clip. Similarly, trailer editors and studios have been known to misrepresent the tone or style of a film they see as a tough sell in an effort to generate some extra ticket sales.
In truth, most audiences are savvy enough to know that movies are constantly evolving artefacts until they’re released, so some changes between the trailer and the finished film are to be expected. Some mistruths included in trailers go further than that, though, and can be viewed as bald-faced lies. Naturally, these instances tend to go down poorly. After all, who wants to feel like they’ve been tricked into seeing a film?
Here are 10 movie trailers that outright lied to the audience.
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