Someone (Jake Kanter at Deadline) FINALLY wrote a feature about the goddamn scourge of fake trailers clogging up (and many times pushing out) actual, REAL, film advertising on YouTube. Guess what: Studios LIKE EM!

https://deadline.com/2025/03/inside-youtube-fake-movie-trailers-1236352406/

This fucking SUCKS and I HATE IT

Instead of enforcing copyright on counterfeit commercials, Deadline can reveal that a handful of Hollywood studios are asking YouTube to ensure that the ad revenue made from views flows in their direction. Quite why they are doing this is a mystery (all the majors approached by Deadline declined to comment), but it raises questions about their willingness to take cash for content that exploits their IP and talent, at a time when there is an existential crisis about how copyright collides with AI. Actors’ union SAG-AFTRA describes our revelation as a “race to the bottom.”

Step back, and a more obvious question emerges: why are studios allowing fake trailers to flourish in the first place? Those who create these videos believe they help feed the movie promotion machine, but a sceptic might argue that the trailers could serve to degrade and cheapen official marketing material, potentially imperilling perceptions of the final movie.

And what of the fake trailer creators themselves? Some do it for fun, while others are building meaningful businesses. Either way, they are generating billions of views and making money. Welcome to YouTube’s weird world of fake film trailers. 

This thing goes in pretty deep into the whole "Industrialization of Fake Trailers" and if you ever wanted to know how Screen Culture actually works, well, now's your chance. Like I said above - it fucking sucks.