Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan weapons up for Gladiator 2 — despite not being in the actual film
IN THE OPENING moments of a Gladiator 2 trailer, Barry Keoghan is shown in armour, staring into the distance. "I'll finish your quest for you," he promises via voiceover, before a spectacular battle sequence and rousing soundtrack kick in. Yet, despite it drawing over a million views on YouTube, this is no authorised preview for the Ridley Scott sequel (Keoghan is not even on the official cast list). Instead, it's the handiwork of a concept-trailer creator, who mashes together pre-existing movie footage with their own effects to make videos with a huge global reach.
"It's really quite complicated," says Screen Culture's Nikhil Chaudhari of the process. His channel, which was launched in 2018, puts out daily videos teasing everything from Stranger Things' fifth season to the non-existent 'Iron Man 4' for its 888,000 subscribers. A new concept trailer for Ballerina, the upcoming John Wick spin-off starring Ana de Armas, has garnered 144,000 views in just three days. Only a brief official synopsis has been released to date, but the short video blends clips from the Keanu Reeves-fronted franchise with action shots of de Armas from The Gray Man to show what a collaboration could look like.
"As we've grown, we've built a great team of over a dozen people, including editors, VFX creators and sound engineers," Chaudhari explains. The money for this set-up comes from ad revenue and the channel's three paid membership tiers, whereby viewers pay up to $19.99 a month for exclusive content and influence on the channel's output.
As most of the trailers are based on titles yet to be released and with little information readily available about them, teams need to get creative when it comes to plot. "We try to come up with a logical and original continuation of the story," explains Vladimir Grudkin, co-founder of Teaser PRO, which has 1.16 million subscribers. "If there are source materials, such as Marvel comics, we study them and figure out how to present the story." One trailer that posits what a standalone Miles Morales Spider-Man movie could look like, for example, charts his entire origin story.