Discover how the trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash has sparked controversy over fake movie trailers on YouTube.
Image: KH Studio/YouTube, Farknot Architect/Adobe Stock]
A trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in James Cameron’s galactically successful series, starts by delivering on the title’s promise. Rivers of lava cascade through the forests of Pandora, reducing it to charred rubble. Soon, the score swells to epic proportions as the hulking, Smurf-colored Na’vi survey their ruined territory and swear vengeance on an unseen enemy. Released back in January, this trailer already has 3.5 million views. Not bad, considering it contains not one second of footage from the actual film.
Whenever Cameron and 20th Century Studios do release the official first trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is headed to theaters in December, they certainly won’t release it through “KH Studio,” one of two video channels YouTube just demonetised to crack down on a larger issue.
The fake Avatar trailer, which relies on some truly abysmal AI, is part of a scourge of similar videos designed to trick movie lovers into thinking they’ve found a first look at an upcoming flick. Crafty editors with access to Adobe Premiere take existing footage from previous media, splice in a dash of AI, and—voilà—a steady stream of clicks and views from eager film buffs.
Google any major movie coming out later this year, and whether an actual trailer for it is already out there or not, the search will surface an impostor or two. Want a fake first glimpse of Edgar Wright’s upcoming reboot of The Running Man? It’s available on a channel called T Studio Movie’s (sic). How about a pirated preview of the next Conjuring movie? It can be conjured up on one called Skynet Studios. The most successful operators out there, though, appear to be the two that have newly attracted YouTube’s ire: KH Studio and Screen Culture.
YouTube’s move comes as a result of Deadline investigating the fake movie trailer epidemic. The publication reports that movie studios such as Warner Bros. Discovery were quietly lobbying YouTube to send any ad revenue from those fake movie trailers their way, but YouTube opted instead to suspend heavyweights Screen Culture and KH Studio from its partner program. Apparently, these channels violated the video giant’s policies forbidding content doctored in such a way that it misleads viewers.
“The two impacted channels were correctly suspended from the YouTube Partner Program following violations of our monetization policies,” says Jack Malon, Policy Communications Manager at YouTube. “Content isn’t eligible for monetization that uses metadata to deceive viewers into believing the content is different from what it actually is. For example, this could include a video title or description that alleges an official affiliation with a company. These suspensions are unrelated to any Content ID, or other copyright, enforcement.”
The two channels’ differing approaches highlight the level of variety in this strangely popular space. Screen Culture has 1.4 million subscribers and offers three tiers of membership. As Deadline reports, the channel’s founder employs a team of a dozen editors, whose fake movie trailers are viewed so often, they occasionally outrank real trailers in YouTube’s search results. Screen Culture trailers are often slick and authentic-looking at first glance, mirroring the cadence and sound cues of typical Hollywood trailers with impressive alacrity. Only in the moments when the AI gets a touch shoddy, or the exposition extra disjointed, is it clear that these are forgeries.
The other newly demonetized channel, KH Studio, is a bit goofier. Its more amateurish trailers feature robotic AI-voice narration and graphics that look like ancient video game cutscenes. Beyond fake trailers for soon-to-be-blockbusters like the next Avatar, it also offers trailers for movies that will never be released, such as Interstellar 2, a Millie Bobby Brown-led remake of Nightmare on Elm Street; and Titanic 2: The Return of Jack.
The trailers on both channels offer warnings to viewers that these are merely “concept trailers.” The warnings come buried underneath the view count and a flood of hashtags, though; by the time the average viewer sees them, they will have already clicked on a link and inflated the view count that bit further. Although KH Studio claims in the warning that its videos are “created solely for artistic and entertainment purposes,” the channel’s trailers don’t seem to have enough artistry or originality in their use of borrowed material to meet YouTube’s monetisation standards. They appear more like vehicles for siphoning off search traffic for notable movie titles.
While the output of neither of those channels may rise to the level of art or originality, there’s a whole cottage industry of bait-and-switch trailers operating around them on YouTube. Channels like Blend FX and Dynatic Films publish videos about movies like the upcoming Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson and simply add the word “trailer” in the title, guaranteeing at least some search-based traffic. The creators of those trailers can’t even bother cobbling together a semi-coherent narrative to bolster their deception.
Both KH Studio and Screen Culture are entitled to appeal YouTube’s decision. If they lose, we may never know what the trailer for Eraserhead 2: Revenge of the Lady in the Radiator looks like. If they win, all the other fake trailers may just be a sneak preview of what’s to come.
