I Triple-Dog-Dare Movie Studios Not to Show Exclusive Footage at Comic-Con
We got to see some spectacular footage at Comic-Con this year for movies such as Suicide Squad, Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse, and more. The fans in Hall H went absolutely crazy for it all! They loved it! Deadpool even got a standing ovation!
This footage was brought to Comic-Con for the fans, and everyone in that room was asked not to film any of the footage shown. There were about 6,500 people, and not everyone in the great hall seems to care about the rules. Shortly after a lot of this footage screened in Hall H, it had already leaked out online.
It's unfortunate that happened, and you won't see us post any of that footage on the site because we want to respect the rules of the convention and the studios. Because of the leaks, there's currently a lot of talk about the studios possibly not bringing more cool exclusive footage to Comic-Con.
When Deadline asked Warner Bros. for the official Suicide Squad footage that screened, they got the following statement from Sue Kroll, the President of Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution for Warner Bros.
“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!”
Every year this kind of exclusive footage leaks online. It's nothing new, and the studios should expect it. I hate to say that, but it's the world we live in. Some fans are just so damn excited that you can't stop them from wanting to share the awesomeness they are seeing with the world. The report suggests beefing up security, but this year the security in Hall H was so hardcore that it was annoying! The amount of security they had this year was ridiculous, and the footage still leaked. It's a mad beast that can't be stopped.
A lot of studios have adapted to this, including Warner Bros., who showed off a new trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at the con, and then shortly after released it online for the world to see! They should have done the same thing with the Suicide Squad footage! It may not have been a completed product, but it was freakin' awesome! Lucasfilm also did this with a fantastic behind-the-scenes featurette for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The fact that this stuff leaked out doesn't seem to be hurting the film, though. It's only getting fans more excited about it. What hurt Suicide Squad most was when director David Ayer released that first photo of Jared Leto as The Joker. There was a highly negative uproar from the fan community. After that, a lot of people were turned off. The footage they showed at Comic-Con changed that attitude, though! It got everyone excited! Regardless of the law that was broken, when it was posted online, that only helped ignite the flames of excitement in the fans again. It's free marketing! Everyone is talking about it! Almost everyone who has seen it seems to be loving it! This goes for Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse as well. I understand that it's not right to leak the footage, but I'm just making the point that the fact that it did is only building more positive hype for the films.
If the studio isn't ready to release any footage to the world yet, then maybe they need to stop bringing it to the convention. But you know what? I don't think they will stop. It's too important to them, and they need the hype to build because they want their films to blow up at the box office and be successful. In fact, I triple-dog-dare the studios not to bring their exclusive footage to show the fans at Comic-Con. It's not like the fans are going to miss it if they don't. At the end of the day the studios are the big winners because the fans are excited about their films and that excitement is being shared.
When I first heard Marvel wouldn't be at Comic-Con this year I was completely bummed out. But you know what? When I was actually at the Con, I didn't even miss them, and neither did anyone else I talked to. There was so much other cool stuff to see and do. We geeks know how to make the best out of things and have a good time at these events. There was simply no time to think about Marvel not being there.
If the studios did decide to stop showing this exclusive footage, it will only hurt them and their films. It's not going to hurt the fans, and it's not going to hurt Comic-Con. They will always thrive.
In the end, of course we don't want them to stop bringing us this cool footage because of a few excited dumbasses in the crowd. But, if they did stop, I don't think anyone would notice because no one knows what they would be missing. And when no one knows, no one can talk about it, and when no one can talk about it, there's no hype being built, and when there's no hype being built, no one can get excited about their movies, and the studios don't want that because they need that excitement to make money.
What do you think about the possibility that some studios might stop bringing this exclusive footage to Comic-Con in the future? Can you live without it? Or is it going to piss you off?