13 Movies That Started Out As Fake Trailers Or Videos

The most common production pipelines are to progress either from an original screenplay to a film or from book to screenplay to film. Sometimes a short film or proof of concept is made as an intermediary step before the feature-length version is made. One less common — but still valid — production route is to kick off the process with a fake trailer or another type of web video before the feature film equivalent is ready to go.

These types of fake trailers and videos most commonly start out as self-contained over-the-top parodies with no real intention of becoming something larger until later on, with some exceptions. Other times, a potential feature film may be facing trouble with a studio, and a video sneakily hitting the internet can be a way to drum up interest and prove to the money people that an audience is out there. The best case scenario with these types of videos is that they go viral and amass a large built-in audience for the future feature-length iteration. This pre-established audience can then be counted on for ticket sales or even as a source for crowdfunding the larger version of the fake trailer or video. Here are 13 movies that successfully took this atypical production pipeline.

As part of the promotion for "Grindhouse," director Robert Rodriguez held a "Grindhouse" trailer competition in conjunction with the SXSW Film Festival.  Indie filmmakers were tasked with creating original fake trailers in the spirit of the fictional exploitation film trailers made by the big name directors of "Grindhouse." The winner of the competition was chosen by Rodriguez and presented by him at the festival.

The winning submission was "Hobo with a Shotgun" from Canadian filmmaker Jason Eisner.  While the trailer wasn't included in the U.S. release of "Grindhouse," it did accompany the film for theatrical screenings across Canada. 

Eisner was young and had only made a couple of short films before creating his fake trailer. He used the buzz from the trailer's success to turn the two-minute parody trailer into a feature film, which was released four years later in 2011, with Rutger Hauer starring as the titular shotgun-wielding homeless person. Eisner used his newfound success to pay it forward to other filmmakers on the come up. He held his own version of the "Grindhouse" trailer competition in 2011, with the winner getting included in the physical media release of the "Hobo with a Shotgun" feature film. The winner of Eisner's fake trailer competition was "Van Gore" by filmmakers Keith Hodder and Peter Strauss. 

Chris Hemsworth had played Thor in the MCU four times already by the time the "Team Thor" short was released. Fans were more than familiar with Hemsworth in the role by 2016, but "Team Thor" managed to show a new side of Hemsworth and the character.

Released during Comic-Con in 2016, "Team Thor" was three-and-a-half minutes long and took the form of a video diary showing how Thor spends his downtime when not busy saving the world. There had been plenty of fish-out-of-water humor in his prior standalone films, but "Team Thor" ramped the comedy way up and allowed Hemsworth to flex his comedic chops in a different way while significantly switching up the character's personality from serious to goofy. More "Team Thor" shorts would follow and the character's next standalone film, "Thor: Ragnarok," would stick with this new personality and comedy style. 

Both of these "Thor" projects were made by Taika Waititi, who had previously only worked on smaller indie films. "Team Thor" helped prove that a new direction and style was viable for the character and also showcased the comedic chemistry between Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, who would end up becoming something of a buddy duo in "Thor Ragnarok." This change in style helped turn Thor's next standalone film into one of the highest-rated movies of the entire MCU while his previous standalone movies landed near the bottom of the franchise. Waititi returned to the character again in 2022 with "Thor: Love and Thunder."

"Black Dynamite" only had a limited theatrical release and might not have set the world on fire, but it built up a dedicated fanbase over time and led to an Adult Swim animated spin-off a couple of years later. "Black Dynamite" is a stylistic homage to the Blaxploitation films of the '70s. The setting jumps from mean streets to secret laboratories to the White House, and the plot progresses from drug dealing to zesty kung fu treachery to an evil government plot to shrink genitalia. This over-the-top comedy is absolutely hilarious, with much of its success being owed to its star Michael Jai White, who co-wrote the script.

In an interview with 247HH, director and co-writer Scott Sanders explained that the concept for the main character came straight from White. Before there was any inkling of a feature film, White had taken a photo of him in character as Black Dynamite. Sanders explained, "He had the gun, the afro, the nunchucks, the mustache, and that exact same suit." Together, Sanders and White made a fake trailer that mixed footage of White as Black Dynamite interspersed with archival footage of actual Blaxploitation films from the 1970s. Sanders got that fake trailer in front of a producer, who used it to raise the small budget necessary to turn it into a real movie.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation" is a unique beast. After Steven Spielberg released "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981, two children became such big fans of it that they set about creating their own extremely faithful recreation of the film. Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos, and couple of their friends began working on their adaptation in 1982 with no money and when they were just 12 years old. It is worth noting that they began working on their remake more than a year before "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released on VHS, which meant creating such a faithful adaptation was even more challenging. They spent the next seven years working on their remake and made impressive progress by showcasing unbridled passion and ingenuity, but the project was left unfinished as Zala and Strompolos entered adulthood.

The unfinished video wound up getting in front of Steven Spielberg, who gave the project his blessing. Decades later, the childhood friends returned to their passion project and finished it. After a total of 35 years, they managed to recreate the entirety of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on a shot-by-shot basis. The full process was chronicled in the documentary "Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made." 

The numerous Japanese and English TV shows, assorted movies and straight-to-video spin-offs, and Hasbro toy line that comprise the "Power Rangers" franchise were all kid-friendly for decades. Then the franchise got a major and unlicensed tonal shakeup in 2015 when the 14-minute-long "Power/Rangers" was released on YouTube.

The short was far darker and grittier than any of the official "Power Rangers" properties and was made as an unauthorized fan film as part of Adi Shankar's Bootleg Universe.  Shankar, a Hollywood producer behind movies like "The Grey" and "Lone Survivor," was a huge fan of "Power Rangers" as a child. But he realized the concept essentially equated to the rangers being enlisted as child soldiers, which befit a darker, more violent tone. Shankar was adamant that the bootleg short wasn't any kind of pitch, but its influence on the future of the "Power Rangers" franchise is impossible to miss.

Shortly after the Shankar-produced "Power/Rangers" went viral with 25 million views, an official "Power Rangers" reboot went into production. While it wasn't a direct expansion of the short or quite as violent, the reboot carried over the darker, grittier tone of the viral short. For the first time in the history of the official franchise, the 2017 "Power Rangers" was rated PG-13 instead of aiming for child audiences. Shankar and director Joseph Kahn didn't work on the reboot, but many members of the SPFX and stunt teams were shared between the two projects, while actor Jason Tremblay (father of child actor Jacob Tremblay) played a police officer in both versions.

"The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon" was released on YouTube all the way back in 2009. Since then it has racked up over 37 million views.  The video is presented as a long-form trailer for a horror movie, about a man being ever so slowly beaten to death with a spoon over the course of several years by an evil spirit. The short was made by filmmaker Richard Gale, who made plans to turn the fake trailer into a full movie. The title of the feature would be "Ginosaji: The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon," with Ginosaji being the name of the demon as revealed in the trailer and also the Japanese word for "silver spoon."

The fake trailer joked that the movie was over 12 years in the making, and that turned out to be an underestimation. Though the feature has yet to come out all these years later, it is still in the works. Gale ran a Kickstarter campaign for the movie and brought in over 150% of his goal. The campaign was launched all the way back in 2015, but Gale has continued to keep his backers in the loop over the years, with the latest update arriving as recently as January 2023. The official "Ginosaji" website explains that the production was placed on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but progress has resumed according to the Kickstarter updates.