Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, May 4th.

Today on Forbes, Inside the Secretive Pay-For Play-For Play World of movie trailers.

Anyone who went to see Marvel Studios Thunderbolts this weekend

could have expected to watch eight, perhaps even ten movie trailers before the feature began. Throw in an ad for popcorn

and Nicole Kidman waxing poetic about the power of cinema, and the pre-show lineup can stretch to

nearly a half hour. Even if that can seem like a drag to an audience, those are highly valuable

minutes to both the movie studios and the

theater chains. In an era when theatrical attendance continues to decline, the domestic box

office grossed $8.7 billion last year, a dip of more than 3% from 2023, and ticket sales

dropped 7%. Even still, trailers remain the top driver of awareness

and decision-making for most moviegoers. According to National Research Group's biannual survey,

36% of those between the ages of 12 and 74 say they first heard about the most recent

movie they saw in theaters through a trailer, more than

any other source. Because Thunderbolts is the first anticipated blockbuster of the summer movie season,

the 18-week period between the 1st of May and Labor Day, that accounts for 40% of the annual

box office total in the U.S. and Canada,

its preview space is one of the most important marketing opportunities for the biggest releases,

including Paramount's Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning, Universal's Jurassic World,

Rebirth, and Warner Brothers's Superman.

With fierce competition for these theoretically finite slots, there's another reason for the increased number of trailers. Theater chains are selling preview time to the highest

bidder. The particulars of this pay-to-play system are whispered about with a level of secrecy

that Ethan Hunt's impossible missions force would appreciate.

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