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Because.

My distaste for inflation adjusted figures notwithstanding, but the sentence is very poorly written and those figures sound made up. Made up in they sound like figures you'd pull out if you were having a discussion and no ability to research. "Oh it made something like one billion". I dunno. Hard to explain. Maybe they needed more numbers after the decimal point?

Either way, it's stupid. It is yet again discrediting a movie for having the ability to make that much money.

Off topic but I guess trailers are loosely related to box office discussion...

DP, could you enlighten us (or maybe just me) as to how trailers get put with which movies? Who is in control -- the studio/distributor whose films is about to be shown or the theater or someone else altogether? Does any money change hands for this seemingly valuable "advertising"? Are trailers the same every time a movie is shown anywhere in the US) In other words, are the trailers shown in front of Avatar the exact same in Peoria and NY?

I ask because as I was watching Avatar on Friday in Evanston it struck me again that the trailers for Avatar are awfully valuable and clearly they weren't all for Fox films.

Thanks. Feel free to email me if you prefer to keep this discussion off the blog.

And anyone else who has info on this, please post it.

Direwolf, I'm not in the industry but I read awhile back that the studio gets to specify the trailer immediately preceding the feature, and any others are left to the discretion of the theater.

Yeah, I was under the impression that unless studios attached a trailer to a print, trailers just happen to ship the same day as movies. So Fox can ship out a bunch of new trailers with Avatar, but they can be played in front of any movie; it's just vaguely expected that theaters will probably play at least some of them with Avatar. Similarly, another studio can ship their trailers out when something like Avatar opens, hoping to get placed with that. This seems to have been the case with Sherlock Holmes and the Iron Man 2 trailer; Paramount seemed to be assuming that a lot of theaters would stick the future Downey movie with the current one (and it was the case when I saw Sherlock).

Attaching doesn't seem to happen all that often -- I remember the Star Wars trailers were sometimes attached to specific movies, and that the prequels themselves sometimes had a trailer attached, or at least Episode I had a couple of Fox reels that were on just about every print... and Disney/Pixar usually seems to attach something. I saw The Princess and the Frog, and there was a trailer for the next DisneyNature movie that came after, even, the "now it's time for the actual movie" type reel; I assume that means it was attached and they didn't bother futzing with it.

Is that right? I'm no kind of expert. It's funny that it's mostly up to the theaters only because sometimes I'll go see a movie and realize that wow, the people showing this movie kinda think that the people seeing this movie are stupid.

When The Phantom Menace came out, every studio basically cut 30-second trailers of their biggest summer movies and attached them accordingly. Yes, Fox had 2 or 3 promo reels advertising three respective movies each that ran on various Star Wars prints (Anna and the King, Fight Club, The Beach, etc).

My favorite trailer whiff was Universal, which refrained from attaching The Mummy Returns to The Grinch, for fears that the Mummy Returns teaser was too violent and intense for the PG-rated Grinch (which of course was also playing to very very young kids). Of course, other studios attached their own (arguably more violent) PG-13 trailers to The Grinch and Universal lost a minor advertising opportunity. And, similarly, I'll never understand why Warner debuted their second Dark Knight trailer with Iron Man, instead of waiting a week later and giving it an exclusive weekend run with Speed Racer.

Thaks for the trailer feedback. However, I am still confused. It seems that only the studio who produces/distributes the film can "attach" a trailer. By attach I assume it means it is part of the print and thus always guaranteed to show. Scott, you seem to saying otherwise or maybe I misunderstood what you wrote.

I can see theaters having control as they know what films are coming and can play trailers that would seem to appeal to the same audience.

If theaters "own" the trailers I have hard time understanding why they would not sell them. Studios must want to have their trailers shown before specific genre films and especially before widely attended films like Avatar.

Or maybe there are just rules between studios and theaters that spell out how the trailer situation works.

Obviously, I have no idea how this works so thanks again for comments so far any to come.

I worked at a movie theater briefly, and a lot of times we'd just attach the trailers that we wanted to see.

Basically, Dire, studios and exhibitors have agreed to the trailer right before the feature as space controlled by the studio whose movie it is. Every trailer selection before that is pushed for by studios, but is completely up to the exhibitor.

So on Avatar, I believe Fox "attached" - and it can be physically attached, but doesn't have to be - Percy Potterwannabe.

Now, it does happen that studios will trade off slots on that "attached" trailer. So if Paramount were anxious about Shutter Island - using a completely made up situation - than they could have gone to Fox and said, "We'll give you the "attached" slots on Shutter Island and Iron Man 2 in return for an Avatar attachment." If Fox had no hard-to-sell title before the summer, they might go for that.

Twilight: New Moon would have been a perfect situation for a swap... though when I saw it, I think a pretty successful trailer for their April release, Furry Vengeance, was attached. But The Wolfman, for instance, was also shown and would have been a good swap for U. (Maybe it was.) Thing is, U doesn't have a family title to push Furry until after Furry is out. So maybe not.

Is this making sense?

Another informal agreement that is stuck to is the "epic trailer" rule, which allows one trailer a year per studio of over 2 minutes.

Studios do buy space sometimes in the pre-show, though that is not directly paying the exhibitors.

If the exhibitors decided to start trying to charge for trailer plays and slotting, the studios would take it out of their hides elsewhere. Remember, there are some costs taken out of the grosses beyond the 45% that goes to exhibitors already. Those would become contentious. If one chain started charging, another could compete for area exclusivity using price competition. And the split itself would come under attack.

There were accusations a few years back that one studio was, indeed, paying exhibitors under the table to play their trailers ahead of the other studios. But all was denied and the payoffs stopped.

The relationships, though there are fewer and fewer theater owners left, are very much in handshake agreement land. They get rough and tumble now and again. But if someone feels slighted, calls are made to people with first names who have known each other for decades. Distribution is still an old boys club (including Nikki Rocco).

Studios do pay attention and do trailer checks at theaters to see what's up. But except for the "attached" trailer, it's pretty much up to the theater.

Direwolf...

If the theaters sold those spots, they would have to work out a deal with the studio whose film they were using to attract that money.

The studio can attach a trailer to their own film. Sometimes, they simply include the trailers in the film cans as a suggestion, not a mandate. The theater chain frequently sends out a list of trailers that their bookers, knowing full well what they've already agreed to book, insist on having in front of certain films. Beyond that, it's up to whoever is actually building out the prints. It was one of my favorite jobs as a projectionist in high school and college, putting each trailer ring together, largely based on what I wanted to see the most.

It used to be the wild west in terms of trailer placement, but nowadays, at least with the big chains, studios negotiate which trailers are to be placed with which films. Some studios buy space with exhibitors, others do not. The film buyer for a particular theater may tell the theater manager the list of trailers to cut onto the head of the film, barring that, the theater projectionist is supposed to attach trailers enclosed in the can.

Most studios attach one trailer (sometimes two films together as a combo trailer but most of the times only one film). They will also enclose one additional trailer in the can. In addition to these two trailers, other studios request that their trailers be enclosed as well. This saves on shipping costs and makes it more likely that the trailers will be played. Anything not enclosed is sent separate, and, unless there's a specific agreement between the circuit and the distributor, will probably sit on a shelf.

Digital is handled slightly differently. Competitive trailers are sent on a separate hard drive and the projectionist is asked by management to load the files onto specific films. As before, management gets instructions from the home office buyer.

Nowadays it's important that approved trailers be placed in front of specific movies because, if you've noticed, the MPAA has changed guidelines. In the past the MPAA would approve trailers for "all audiences" but now they're approving for "appropriate audiences." This requires placement of, say, the trailer of Hot Tub Time Machine cannot go with The Tooth Fairy. Not that "mistakes" don't happen.

No trailers at all on the 3-D imax print of Avatar at the Bridge in LA. That was a first. I suppose the only appropriate one would have been Alice in Wonderland, which is a different studio.

"Another informal agreement that is stuck to is the "epic trailer" rule, which allows one trailer a year per studio of over 2 minutes."

You mean three minutes here, David. The standard length of a non-teaser trailer is between 2 to 2 1/2 minutes.

Poland do you like playing dumb or what?

"isn't a factual misstatement of grosses - Shrek 2 grossed $920 million and Finding Nemo grossed $865 million - kind of pushing credulity? How would the average reader know that neither film hit $1 billion at the box office?"

The reader would know since it says, "Adjusted for inflation" right in the beginning of that sense. Seriously, if that's not grasping at straws than I don't know what is.
It helped the reader because it told the reader which movie drew in the biggest crowds wordwide. And all the movies are recent enough that nobody not even you should claim they came from different box office generations or whatever.

Yes,

Gonzo - grammatically it's not clear what the "adjusted for inflation" is referring to. It could easily be read that only Ice Age 3 is being adjusted for inflation. "AdjustING for inflation" would be clearer, but the additional past-tense verbs being applied to the latter two movies still hurt the clarity as they imply a looking-back view rather than a present adjusted view.

It does seem rather petty though, I'd rather DP called them out for systematic distortion rather than poor sentence structure.

You can't adjust something for inflation that was released this year.

That's external information that the reader provides that isn't contained in the sentence. AS WRITTEN, the "adjusted for inflation" applies to Ice Age 3 - moviephiles will adjust that in their heads because they know the relative release dates. Casual readers may not.

Consider the following change, which is legitimate under clausal parsing.

"Adjusted for inflation, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” ranks as the third biggest computer-animated movie of all time. This is behind “Shrek 2” (DreamWorks), which sold $1.1 billion worldwide, and “Finding Nemo” (Pixar), which hit $1 billion."

The previous paragraph refers to it as a 2009 release. Come on.

And it's 2010 now, and neither Shrek 2 nor Finding Nemo have release dates mentioned.

I know it's a quibble, but the sentence IS badly constructed. What they wrote isn't what they meant - being able to interpret what they meant from external knowledge doesn't take away from that fact. I don't think it's worthy of an entire thread discussion, but NYT should have better writing than that.

For the reverse, consider the following sentence:

"I was a writer and I worked at the New York Times"

The implication is that I worked as a writer for the New York times, but the sentence is equally true if I was a writer for a blog with 3 total readers (including my parents) while working in the mailroom at the NYT.

The original sentence should have been written:

'Adjusting for inflation, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” ranks as the third biggest computer-animated movie of all time, behind “Shrek 2” (DreamWorks), which stands at $1.1 billion worldwide, and “Finding Nemo” (Pixar), at $1 billion.'

Now the "adjustment" applies to the whole sentence while the figures for Shrek and Nemo are correctly present tense.

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