This week has been a big one for movie trailer news. Earlier this week, DC dropped the first trailer for the eagerly anticipated Supergirl, giving fans their best look yet at Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El and our first look at Jason Momoa’s Lobo, but that’s not the only trailer that superhero fans have been buzzing about. Rumors have been swirling that the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday is coming soon as well and now, we know that one of those rumors is true — and fans are going to have to go see Avatar: Fire and Ash four times if they want to see everything.
A rumor circulating on the internet this week suggested that the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday would be not just one trailer, but multiple trailers screened along with the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash and now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that that is indeed the case. According to their report, there are four different trailers for the wildly anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Each trailer will play for one week attached to Avatar: Fire and Ash and will change each week until all four have been rolled out. That means in order to see all four, fans will need to head to theaters to see the next Avatar, which opens in theaters on December 19th, multiple times.
Will Fans Really Go to The Theaters Just for the Avengers: Doomsday Trailer?
The strategy of having four separate trailers, all playing with Avatar: Fire and Ash, with a new one running each week until all have aired, is an interesting one. While the idea of attaching a movie trailer that fans are eager to see to a movie playing in theaters is certainly not a new concept — it is quite literally how it’s been done for decades and is a pretty decent marketing play — it’s the idea of there being four separate ones that fans would presumably need to go to theaters each week to see that is unique. While we could be wrong, this structure seems to be set up to offer some sort of window of exclusivity with the idea that truly diehard Marvel fans would buy a ticket to Avatar: Fire and Ash just to see the trailer rather than wait for all of them to make their way to an online release eventually.
If that is the case it would seem that Disney — who is the parent company behind both Avatar: Fire and Ash and Avengers: Doomsday — is pulling out all of the stops to ensure that latest Avatar film is a major hit. While the first two films have done very well at the box office, each of which made more than $2 billion at the box office, Fire and Ash has a huge production budget and is one of the most expensive films ever made. Wanting to do everything possible to ensure a return on investment and see the film become financially successful does make sense. However, there is the question of whether MCU fans will really want to put out movie ticket money just to go see a trailer especially when it’s unclear how different each of the four trailers is going to be or exactly when or how they will show up online. Additionally, in the age of cell phones and social media, it isn’t unlikely to consider that those trailers will circulate the internet very quickly thanks to people pirating them by filming in theaters. And, of course, there’s always the chance that fans will simply just wait it out until all four trailers become available for non-theatrical audiences.
However it plays out, the report does at least give Marvel fans something more definitive to hold onto in terms of when the Avengers: Doomsday trailer is coming. It had been speculated that the trailer would be coming out to compete with DC’s Supergirl trailer or even sometime this weekend. Now, it seems pretty clear that we just have to wait one more week before finally getting a look at what might be Marvel’s highest stakes movie to date.
Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters December 19th.
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