Study Says: Everybody Thinks Trailers Show All the Good Scenes, Watches Them Anyway

Survey results of the day: half of us think that trailers give too much away.

The other half are bloggers who have to watch them anyway and have just given up all hope of every being 100% completely spoiler safe.

Unsurprisingly, the results of a survey conducted by YouGov on what Americans think of movie trailers showed that 49% of those surveyed felt that trailers these days tend to show all the “best scenes,” and 32% think that they give away too much of the plot. Well, maybe you feel like you’re the only person who avoid trailers and it’s just unsurprising to me. You’d be surprised how often folks in the (partial) business of sharing trailers hear about how the trailers give everything away.

Then again, maybe you wouldn’t. But my favorite part of the study is what comes next: even though nearly half of us feel like we’ve already seen all the good bits before stepping in to the theater, only 19% have ever let that stop them from going to see a movie. That’s 30% of movie goers who are at a movie regardless of the fact that they feel like they’ve already seen the best parts, and 13% who showed up even though they think they know the whole plot. Trailers are still the biggest factor in whether we decide to see a movie. And that just delights me on a primal, evil level.

From YouGov’s post:

Trailers play a huge role in getting people into theaters: Americans cite the two biggest factors in helping them decide which movies to see as trailers (48%) and personal recommendations (46%). Not far behind, the fact that the movie is the sequel of a movie they enjoyed (39%).  One in four cited movie reviews that they either read online (25%) or saw on TV (23%). A mere 6% said movie-booking sites such as Fandango or Moviefone helped them to decide.

So the next time you complain about a marketing campaign giving away too much in the trailers, maybe instead of opening your mouth, you should shut your wallet.

(via The Hollywood Reporter.)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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