Warner Bros. has released a statement regarding the leak of the exclusive San Diego Comic-Con trailer for Suicide Squad, stating that it may change their approach to future shows.
Every year during Comic-Con, fans online are always looking to get a peek into what Hall H visitors are getting to see, which means someone in the crowd always ends up using a smartphone or camera to record a terribly blurry version of some of the most anticipated trailers of the year. Deadline reports that this may mean we’ll be getting less exclusive footage in the future.
Update: The Suicide Squad trailer has been released officially. That didn’t take long!
This year it happened with Suicide Squad and Deadpool’s Comic-Con trailers. There are versions of both of the exclusive trailers that have leaked online, and studios are starting to get a bit angry at fans who keep taking the “exclusive” out of their Comic-Con trailers.
The President of Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution for Warner Bros., Sue Kroll, issued a statement concerning the Suicide Squad trailer leak. She says that WB have no plans to release the Suicide Squad trailer online, despite a poor quality one being available online.
Her official statement reads: “We have no plans currently to release the Suicide Squad footage that leaked from Hall H on Saturday. It’s unfortunate and ultimately damaging that one individual broke a long-standing trust we have enjoyed with our fans at the convention by posting early material, which, at this point, was not intended for a wider audience. We are still in production on Suicide Squad, and will have a big campaign launch in the future. Our presentation yesterday was designed to be experienced in that room, on those big screens!”
Related: Overanalyzing the Batman v Superman Comic-Con trailer
It’s completely understandable that studios don’t want the exclusive footage to get out if certain elements are meant for the screens at Comic-Con, and in Deadpool’s case Ryan Reynolds said that the reason they didn’t release their trailer online was because the CGI isn’t even finished. He said to look out for an official release in three weeks.
On one hand it’s disappointing to hear that studios may stop bringing exclusive footage to SDCC each year, but on the other hand it’s difficult to not see how releasing or not releasing the trailers officially hurt or help the movies.
The buzz that the leaked trailers get almost rival the official trailers. Batman v Superman’s new trailer was released online very quickly after it was shown at Comic-Con, and it was very well-received and was trending in no time.
Would Suicide Squad have benefited more if an official trailer was released officially, or did the buzz of the leaked trailer do it more good than harm. We think it most likely evens itself out, and it would have probably done a little better if the trailer was officially released online.
The Suicide Squad trailer was very well-received, and so we think having it available to all the millions of fans that weren’t at this year’s Comic-Con would have been very beneficial to the movie’s success. But, we completely understand the studio wanting to give Comic-Con attendees a unique experience.
It’s an interesting problem to have, as the leaked versions of the trailers created nearly as much (if not more) buzz than the official trailers, so it’s hard to know if not releasing exclusive footage in the future is the answer or not. In the end, it’s all about studios creating buzz for their upcoming films, which they certainly have.