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Honest Trailers hit a major milestone Tuesday with its take on 300 marking the series’ 50th trailer telling movies like they really are.
The Screen Junkies series, which began two years ago with a look at Phantom Menace 3D, has become an online phenomenon, with trailers averaging 3 million views.
“It’s awesome — the fact that the audience is still coming back and that we’re still going strong and it wasn’t sort of a one-note thing,” creator Andy Signore tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We always push ourselves to keep it fresh and give the fans want they want.”
“We don’t try to be mean-spirited. It’s about being as honest as possible,” adds Signore, vp original programming at Defy Media. To celebrate its 50th installment, Honest Trailers will be releasing two more trailers over the next two Tuesdays. (Generally, a trailer is released every other Tuesday.)
Honest Trailers broke into television last summer with Breaking Bad and recently tackled The Walking Dead. Signore says they’d like to do more TV — though creating them is incredibly time-intensive as it involves rewatching every episode of a series. Game of Thrones is potentially on the horizon, and Lost is also on Signore’s wish list.
Signore has another White Whale he’s been chasing: “I have this goal of getting a celebrity of some kind to endorse or be in an Honest Trailer of one of their movies.”
Signore says he’s come close, but the actors have decided not to go through with it out of fear of upsetting the studio.
Voiceover artist Jon Bailey, who provides the gravely narration for Honest Trailers, says he’s gotten into the groove of creating them. He now records a trailer in 20 minutes, down from 40.
Bailey’s favorites so far?
“The ones I go back and watch a lot are Jurassic Park — when it makes you laugh you know you did a good job — and the Superman IV one, because it felt like an old ‘80s trailer,” says Bailey.
Signore says it’s a win for him when he gets positive feedback from the people who made the films Honest Trailers takes on.
STORY: Honest Trailers Creator: ‘We’re Not Trying to S—‘ on Movies
“I’ve gotten many texts from studios and people going ‘Hey man, the cast was watching this,’ or ‘Oh man, the director and the crew is watching it and they love it,’ ” says Signore. “I’ve also gotten some feedback where they didn’t, but it’s fun for the majority of people involved in the films.”
Screen Junkies, a Defy Media property, boasts 1.4 million YouTube subscribers. Honest Trailers has racked up more than 80 million views. For those who want to learn from Signore’s success, he will be holding a mentor session at this year’s South by South West. Find more information here.
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