Opinion: Fox, You’re Crazy for Not Releasing Deadpool Trailer Immediately

To say those in attendance at Hall H for Fox’s Comic-Con International: San Diego 2015 panel Saturday evening were excited over the Deadpool trailer is a remarkable understatement. The crowd leaped to their feet, cheered wildly, and flat-out wouldn’t allow the panel to continue without seeing the trailer “one more time.”

But they’re still, more than eighteen hours later, the only ones who have seen the video in any official fashion.

Repeatedly throughout production, and even at the panel itself, star Ryan Reynolds has repeatedly thanked fans for their crazy support, flat out saying that fans on the internet “are the only reason this movie is being made.” “You guys, the internet, the fans, you made the studios do this, twisted their f***in’ necks!” he said at the panel. The leaked test footage in particular, Reynolds has said, made it happen. “I’d like to kiss the person that leaked that test footage,” he told Entertainment Weekly, “and not just a little kiss, but full on the mouth, sloppy, with tongue, for two straight minutes on live television – without commercial interruption. And then I’ll buy you dinner at Red Lobster, at least, and dessert.”

That sounds to me like a man who thinks the fans, and the internet, are important, right? Director Tim Miller echoed his statements saying, “it’s the fans!” when asked about making the movie.

So why, then, is this trailer not officially released? If everyone involved is all about the internet, and all about the fans, and they acknowledge that those two things are the only reason the movie got made, what on Earth could be holding them back?

The first thing is this strange and archaic attempt at Comic-Con exclusivity. In an age where E3, an industry-only event, is broadcasting every press conference and trailer live on the internet, on computers and mobile phones and Xboxes and PlayStations, it seems very behind-the-times that Comic-Con events can’t even get footage up after they debut at their panels, let alone streaming them live. It’s an out-dated concept; Comic-Con does not make features live and die, the fans who watch trailers 88 million times in two days do. A standing ovation in Hall H is a great moment, and bringing in a couple of new scenes or screens just for that crowd still makes sense, but holding back an actual trailer only does two things: makes people who you’re supposedly making this for upset, and guarantees your lawyers will be searching for leaks on every video sharing site for days.

It literally costs studios money to hold back these trailers.

The second thing in the case of Deadpool could be the sheer vulgarity of the subject matter. If this trailer were to be released, it would have to be rated by the MPAA and marked as a “red band” trailer. That could be influencing Fox in their decision, but red band trailers are fairly commonplace nowadays. You tell the audience they’re going to see something too violent or swear-filled to show to general audiences, throw it behind an age gate, and you’re done. After all, they had no problem with the panel itself being put online – and between Tim Miller, Ryan Reynolds, and TJ Miller, there wasn’t really a swearword left unsaid on stage. There was even an entire digression talking about equine sex! If you’re concerned about public perception of your company, your people saying this stuff live is much more vulgar than characters in a film doing so.

That leaves us with one even slightly reasonable reason: building anticipation, and stretching out the time in the spotlight. Does Fox know that everyone who wants to is seeing this trailer in a grainy vertical cell phone video (seriously people, can we talk about how easy it is to turn your phone in the direction of every computer screen and tv in the world?)? Absolutely, certainly, 100% they do. Do they think that means those people won’t watch the full, real, high quality HD trailer when it’s released? Sorry, I can’t hear your answer to that rhetorical question over the laughter of all these studio executives (also, this is an article you’re reading on the internet). They very well could have wanted this trailer to leak, just to play up the connection with the original leak. So this is the most likely real answer: they’re just building anticipation. Is it still infuriating? Oh yeah.

And that fury brings us back to the premise and title of this piece: Fox, you’re just plain crazy for not doing this. A character like Deadpool, whose entire shtick is subversion and self-awareness, would never let something like this happen. In the panel and trailer in question alone, he made fun of his run in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Reynolds’ turn as Green Lantern, respectively. You had an opportunity to literally post it just on the @DeadpoolMovies twitter account at first, for instance, with a tweet saying “Fox doesn’t want me to show you this, but they also sewed my mouth shut so F*** them!” – Hell, you could’ve done that right at the start of the panel, or the second it was playing on the big screen. The PR coup would’ve been double the great word of mouth you’ve already gotten, and grown exponentially in the passing hours. Of course, you could still do that – and could even have it in the works already – and you’ll be able to capture the news cycle all over again.

It fits the character, it fits the nature of the film, it fits what the director and actors say about it, and it’s good for fans and business. So why hasn’t Fox released the Deadpool trailer? Well, they’re really just f***ing with us at this point – so maybe they’re doing things right and the way Deadpool would do them, after all.