The Super Bowl is the venue for a lot of different exciting things: commercials, half-time shows, and oh yeah, football! But it's also a pretty big deal if you're a keen moviegoer. Between all the lavish commercials for cars and snacks, big movies and TV shows have taken the spotlight at the Super Bowl for more than two decades.
At the 2020 Super Bowl, a 30-second ad spot reportedly costs $5.6 million. For context, the entire budget of 2017 Oscar Best Picture winner Moonlight was $1.5 million, so it makes sense that you'll only see big movies at this event.
We've now got a fairly firm idea of what to expect from the big movie studios at Super Bowl LIV. Read on for our predictions on the big trailers on the way for both movies and TV shows, as well as the best trailers from previous years.
- How to live stream the Super Bowl 2020
- Super Bowl 2020 halftime show: what to expect
- 2020 movies: the best films coming this year
Super Bowl trailers 2020: expect to see these movies in action
A pretty extensive report on THR reveals that only two major movie studios have bought ads during this year's Super Bowl: Disney and Universal. Paramount, meanwhile, will advertise during the pre-game. That means you can expect nothing from Warner Bros or Sony (so no new outings for Birds of Prey or Morbius).
We know that Fast and Furious 9 is closely tied to this year's Super Bowl, as its full trailer is being revealed at a Miami event on Friday just ahead of the game, so a tie-in TV spot would make sense. The Fast series is a Super Bowl regular: Hobbs and Shaw dropped a teaser at last year's event, and the 2001 original was shown there too.
THR also points to Minions: The Rise of Gru as landing a Super Bowl spot, if you can't get enough of the Despicable Me family of movies. Universal will also distribute the next Bond movie, No Time To Die. So it's not impossible you'll see more of the movie this weekend.
Paramount's movies A Quiet Place 2, Sonic the Hedgehog and The SpongeBob Movie will apparently feature in the pregame. It's not clear yet if Top Gun: Maverick will make an appearance, but is there a better fit for this obvious dad film than the Super Bowl?
Marvel has been a staple of the Super Bowl for many years, now. Last year, an Avengers: Endgame spot made headlines, as did Captain Marvel. It's probably too early for The Eternals, which is currently filming in London and doesn't even have a first trailer yet, but Black Widow feels like a dead cert, since that movie lands in May.
Other Disney films that could get Super Bowl trailers could include Mulan, Artemis Fowl, The Rock-starring Jungle Cruise and the Pixar duo of Soul and Onward, which are all released before the end of the summer.
Netflix won't release any commercials at this year's Super Bowl, according to a report on Ad Age.
What about TV show trailers at the Super Bowl?
It's not unprecedented for TV show trailers to drop at the Super Bowl, too. Last year, a bizarre Game of Thrones/Bud Light commercial somehow advertised the HBO drama's final season and beer at the same time. The new Twilight Zone series hosted by Jordan Peele made a stirring debut, and Amazon showed off a trailer for its then-new Prime series Hanna. Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale season 3 was also shown in 2019.
The Amazon Prime show Hunters, which stars Al Pacino and will be released in February, already has a Super Bowl trailer. Check it out below:
While it's not technically a trailer, Rick and Morty will feature in a Pringles commercial during the big game. It's a shame they couldn't use this commercial to also reveal when Rick and Morty season 4 will return in 2020, but hey, it's 30 seconds of Rick and Morty animation you've never seen before.
The best Super Bowl trailers ever
Advertising movies at the Super Bowl became a big deal in the '90s, and by 1999, everything from forgotten Nicolas Cage thriller 8MM to Wild Wild West grabbed a halftime spot. Here are a few highlights from over the years.
Independence Day (1996)
Perhaps the most famous Super Bowl movie trailer, nothing grabbed people's attention in 1996 like destroying the White House during a game of football. Independence Day kicked off a larger trend of movies advertising at the Super Bowl.
The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (2003)
Do you remember the last time you were excited by The Matrix? It was probably in 2003, just before The Matrix Reloaded came out. The first Matrix was advertised back during 1999's Super Bowl, and The Chicago Tribune called it a “befuddling movie” at the time, which is funny considering how it would important the movie would be that year. Sadly, that trailer appears to be lost to time.
Is two sequels, both released in 2003, were among the most anticipated movies of that decade. This trailer manages to make you excited for them, even if the resulting two movies were very disappointing. Somehow, there's a Matrix 4 in the works for next year.
The Avengers (2012)
Even after 23 Marvel movies, it's hard to underline just what a big deal The Avengers was eight years ago. This trailer offered a look at the various superheroes coming together to take on Loki and a whole bunch of space monsters.
Fast and Furious 7 (2015)
Fast and Furious is a regular at the Super Bowl, and this trailer featured both a villainous Jason Statham and a car jumping between buildings, all crammed into a 60-second trailer during a football game. How will Fast and Furious 9 top this?
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
This intense trailer was the first to show who, exactly, would be on both sides of the fight between the Avengers in the third Captain America movie. And this teaser performed an amazing trick: they edited Tom Holland's Spider-Man out of the line-up of Tony Stark's combatants, to preserve the surprise of that character's role.
Stranger Things season 2 (2017)
This trailer has a novel conceit, by making it look like an '80s TV commercial before the Stranger Things elements actually kick in. The final shot of season 2's big bad, the Mind Flayer, gives an amazing sense of the increased scale (and budget) of the second season, even if the creature's appearances in the show were ultimately pretty fleeting.
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
The Cloverfield Paradox is an undeniably bad sci-fi movie that messily explains how the three movies with 'Cloverfield' in the title fit together. But releasing its first trailer during the 2018 Super Bowl, and then putting it on Netflix on the same day, was a pretty bold (and expensive) move by the streaming service. It's unlikely this film will be remembered for anything else.
Westworld season 2 (2018)
The first season of Westworld was a big-budget sci-fi hit for HBO, and despite the second season being a little too convoluted to have the same impact, the show's return was a big deal. This trailer makes it look like you're watching an ad for the titular theme park, before things turn nasty. It's basically the entire premise of Westworld condensed down to a minute of stylish footage.
No comments yet.