YouTube May Finally Be Cracking Down on Fake Movie Trailers

YouTube May Finally Be Cracking Down on the Blight of Fake Movie Trailers

Any committed film geek who spends time on the internet, and particularly on YouTube, has surely experienced this particular phenomenon in the last few years: You read something about a film, and then conduct a search to see if any teasers or trailers have already been released for it. And lo and behold, the search results return half a dozen videos screaming “OFFICIAL TRAILER” on YouTube. But wait, why does that disembodied voiceover in the trailer sound so odd? Why are there vague intertitles? Why does none of this footage seem to flow together organically? Well, it’s probably because you’ve fallen victim to the site’s ever-expanding rash of fake movie trailers, and you’re hardly alone. Producing irritating fakeries has become big business online, but the world’s biggest streaming platform seems to finally be taking some action against them, stripping monetization from more of the fake trailer producers to deny them financial incentives to keep flooding the zone with what has become a deluge of AI junk.

Once upon a time, there was almost something quaint to the phenomenon of fake movie trailers on YouTube. As a concept, fan-created trailers have existed for decades, and were typically just an expression of nerdy fandom: YouTubers splicing together clips from a movie, or from many movies, to create what they imagined a trailer might look like for a property that had never been adapted as a film. They were also frequently used for comedic effect: Prolific YouTuber VJ4rawr2 might be considered the patron saint of this sort of thing with classic videos like their supposed trailer for Titanic 2: Jack’s Back, which sees Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack lifted out of the sea in a block of ice, thawed out and then escaping into NYC in the midst of a manhunt. These earlier instances of fake movie trailers in YouTube simply reveled in the absurd, being primarily produced for entertainment rather than outright attempts to deceive their audience or profit from mistaken viewership. Only the most gullible or, frankly, dumb viewers could watch the below Titanic 2: Jack’s Back trailer and believe they were seeing footage from an actual upcoming Hollywood production, rendering the gag largely harmless.

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In more recent years, however, organized YouTube networks have increasingly turned toward the production of fake movie trailers as a money-making endeavor, dependent entirely upon deception. This trend perhaps unsurprisingly correlated with the continued rise and domination of fandom and IP-driven filmmaking in what we might as well call the MCU Era, making major franchises like Marvel and Star Wars prime targets for fakery. These trailers are being put together with a greater degree of sophistication, and aimed at media literacy-lacking audiences that are increasingly unable to tell the difference between reality and confabulation. And even if you can tell that you’re watching a fake trailer–as I would hope for any reader here–that still doesn’t mean you want to see those fake movie trailers clogging up YouTube (and increasingly Google) search results. They’re a perfect encapsulation of the enshittification of the internet: Where Google search results might once have filtered out this sort of thing, they now tend to be among the first results you see when searching for a film, particularly if that film hasn’t yet released any legitimate footage.

Making matters far worse is the fact that these fake trailers are now far easier and cheaper to produce than they once were. Only a few years ago, those producing them at least had to have some basic video editing skills, but the rise of AI platforms and tools has lowered the bar for entry here. Where a video producer would have previously had to comb through related movies to gather clips and stitch them together to create a convincing fake trailer with their own additions, AI platforms can now slap some slop together in a fraction of the time and effort. Most of the fake trailers you’ll see on YouTube today revolve around these types of thumbnail images that AI can produce, such as the below image of a supposed fifth film in the John Wick franchise starring Keanu Reeves. Although a fifth film in this series has been discussed by creators Derek Kolstad and Chad Stahelski, no film has actually been confirmed. That makes it perfect material for a fake AI trailer, which is almost guaranteed to have favorable search engine optimization as a result.

That fake trailer for a John Wick 5 is the product of Screen Culture, one of the largest YouTube channels specialized specifically in intentionally deceptive, AI-produced fake movie trailers. Since the channel began in 2018, it has amassed more than 1.4 million subscribers, consumers who either don’t know or don’t care that the trailers are fake, but said fake content occasionally can be found in search results before real footage of the same movies. Following an investigation by Deadline into how fake movie trailers are being produced online, the Screen Culture channel was demonetized by YouTube in late March, but (at least for now) it still continues to produce a constant churn of videos, including recent fake trailers for the likes of HBO’s The Last of Us, A Minecraft Movie and Netflix’s Squid Game.

The specific wording employed by various fake movie trailer channels of this sort indicates the delicate dance of legality and hucksterism that is being played. Some of the more shameless channels will simply label their videos as “official trailer” in the title, while sticking legal disclaimers in the small print of the video description. Others like Screen Culture are currently using terminology such as “concept trailer.” Others slip in the word “parody” for the protection that this might afford them, albeit at the end of a long string of text, knowing that most viewers will never see the word “parody” until they’ve already clicked. Others favor terms like “new trailer” or “first trailer” in their own efforts to be deceptive.

Fake movie trailer channels are also unafraid to invent cinematic concepts from the whole cloth, whether that means fancasting nonexistent movies with famous actors who haven’t actually signed on to any such project, or sexualizing supposed sequels to existing, family friendly films. Case in point: A Legend of Zelda film adaptation is currently on the docket for Sony Pictures and Nintendo for 2027, which is far in advance of any casting information. But that didn’t stop Screen Culture from producing the below, AI-generated Legend of Zelda trailer that supposedly stars Tom Holland as Link and Anya Taylor-Joy as Zelda. This footage below is a perfect example of the chopped-up way that this genre combines both fabricated AI footage and real, stolen, copyrighted footage from other sources, including brief shots of Taylor-Joy from The Northman and at least one shot (of the giant eagle) from Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power.

One would naturally expect major Hollywood film studios to oppose the practice of these YouTube channels creating mountains of fake movie trailers, which inevitably would create confusion and dilute the valuable IP that is central to these franchises. After all, a relatively small handful of copyright strikes against a YouTube channel can potentially shut that channel down for good. Perhaps unexpectedly, however, it seems that most of the major Hollywood studios continue to react to the channels with a sort of generalized apathy … or even tacit endorsement. Few channels get removed through copyright strikes. But some studios are effectively monetizing some of the fake trailer videos for themselves, according to the same Deadline investigation, which concluded the following:

Indeed, studios are actively taking a cut of his earnings on AI-fueled trailers, even if the money is paltry in the grand scheme of their earnings. Emails reviewed by Deadline show how Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has claimed monetization on Screen Culture trailers for Superman and House of the Dragon. This means that instead of copyright striking the videos (if a channel accrues three strikes within 90 days, it can be banned from YouTube), WBD is asking YouTube to ensure it receives the ad revenue from views. Similarly, Sony Pictures has claimed revenue on fake trailers for Spider-Man and Kraven The Hunter, while Paramount did the same on a counterfeit Gladiator II video. WBD, Sony, and Paramount declined to comment.

Suffice to say, this seems misplaced at best and beyond stupid at worst–a small amount of money generated for the studio at the cost of huge amounts of fan confusion and consternation as they’re constantly buffeted by more fake movie trailers any time they attempt to conduct a search on YouTube. The most likely, if not exactly logical, reasoning for why the major studios haven’t mobilized against these channels in a more concrete way is that their marketing departments have essentially concluded that “any advertising is good advertising,” even when that advertising is in the form of a fake trailer, filled with fake footage not actually in their upcoming film. Perhaps the studio execs are simply rationalizing that literally anything that creates social impressions revolving around their IP is ultimately a win. What other reason would they have to stand idly by while YouTube channels with millions of subscribers scavenge their movies to create AI slop content?

At the very least, YouTube’s move to demonetize more of these channels feels like a necessary first step toward combating what has become a full-on media industry of wholesale deception. Perhaps a logical next step could be fully enforcing the platform’s terms of service, and shutting down those channels entirely? I promise, we will lose absolutely nothing of value by deleting hundreds of fake trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps from the annals of internet history.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.

YouTube May Finally Be Cracking Down on the Blight of Fake Movie Trailers