The summer season is always known as the time to release tentpole films for studios. Last year we had the likes of Harry Potter, The Hangover 2 and Captain America. This coming year sees the return of Batman in The Dark Knight Rises and the culmination of years of hard work as The Avengers come together, plus Spider-Man makes his re-return in a reboot.
However, it would seem that this December is the tentpole trailer release season. Whether this is an effort to absorb the hype that The Dark Knight Rises is getting, as they released their trailer this week, or is this the 'prime' time to get your trailers out to maximise hype due to some scientific study?
On the Apple trailer site alone, there are five summer tentpole trailers up, with Ridley Scott's Alien prequel, Prometheus incoming tomorrow. Today saw The Hobbit stake its claim for next year, with an introduction to Martin Freeman's Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected journey. Monday saw The Dark Knight Rises swarm the internet, with a second trailer showing off new bad man Bane (Tom Hardy), alongside Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle or Catwoman as she sometimes walks around as.
There was never any worry to these two films, but the key trailers came in the form of sequels to terrible films. Clash of the Titans sequel Wrath of the Titans got itself a trailer this week and what appeared is a moody sequel with what looks like some solid action against some demonic foes. The second terrible film that never needed a sequel was G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The original film saw Christopher Eccleston as a villain up against Channing Tatum and that guy from Scary Movie. This time around, the G.I.'s get wiped out and the only character left seems to be Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and some ninjas, and it looks all the better for it.
The Dictator also staked a claim for next summer, but Sacha Baron Cohen and co seem to have misjudged what could have been a solid and edgy comedy and turned it into an odd fish out of water comedy.
All in all, it seems that December is the time to get your trailers out, not only does it means they're all together, it also means that any film website wanting to wrap up for Christmas gets a whole load more work on their plate. Those pesky film companies.