It is a marketing tool that has resisted the arrival of the internet, platforms, and the development of social networks. Trailers continue to punctuate the preview screenings in cinemas, and to arouse the curiosity of spectators, before the release of films, in particular those presented during the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which lasts until Saturday May 23. This marketing tool has nevertheless changed a lot over the last twenty years.
In the Amélie Poulain district, in the heart of Montmartre, Sonia Mariaulle opens her office to us, decorated with posters from the Cannes Film Festival. Her agency, Sonia Tout Court, has been producing trailers or rather trailers for twenty-five years. “trailer films, I prefer this name to keep the specificity of cinema, because today we can talk about a trailer for the release of a video game or for a concert”explains the manager, black suit and glasses, who compares her work to “jewellery”synthesizing a film as one cuts a precious stone to sublimate it.
Although viewers may have the impression that trailers last longer than before in cinemas, this is only an impression, because they are in reality shorter. “The longer your trailer is, the more money it costs”recalls the manager of the editing company, while it has been possible for six years to buy television advertising to broadcast trailers for films released in cinemas.
“The trailers have reduced in length, but they give more in terms of information, continues Sonia Mariaulle. It has smoothed out, a sort of standardization that comes from across the Atlantic, where their trailers are longer and give more details. For years they used voice-over and replaced it with dialogue that really explains the whole movie… This American trend was imitated by French distributors, with the desire, according to her, to tell more and more elements about the film to reassure the viewer and convince them to buy their ticket.
“At the beginning of the 2000s, I happened to make trailers of more than two minutes. Today, they are shorter formats, around a minute and a half.”
Sonia Mariaulle, founder of the company Sonia Tout Courtà franceinfo
But there are exceptions, like one of the latest creations from the Sonia Tout Court agency: the trailer for the film L’Abandonby Vincent Garenq with Antoine Reinartz. Released last Wednesday and presented at the Cannes Film Festival, this film retraces the last days of Samuel Paty. “There, for now, there are no “spoilers”, everyone knows this story, unfortunately”. After a first teaser, with “Very little dialogue”the trailer is sober, barely evoking the scenes around the assassination of the professor, a result “very gentle, but at the same time plays on urgency. There is a form of respect, to say that the film exists in itself, through its own story. It’s this kind of trailer where you are going to give touches, like the Impressionists.”
/2026/05/15/6a06c5283b532778618165.jpg "Artificial intelligence, duration and “spoilers”… How have movie trailers and posters evolved?")
“We will perhaps be gentler in the way of presenting the film, confirms Loïc Barbier, co-founder of Limelight, another trailer production company. We’re going to be more sober on tough films, which talk about death, a tragedy or an illness. These are subjects that we dismiss, more than before. With around fifteen films released in cinemas, on average each week, “the market is more difficult and more extensive. The failure of a film in theaters is more problematic than before…”
“With the global context, we are going to soften the harshness of the films.”
Loïc Barbier, co-founder of Limelightà franceinfo
Artificial intelligence is entering the making of trailers very slowly at this stage, as it seems inconceivable to touch the image of a film. It can be used to strengthen the musical presentation, by introducing other instruments, for example. On the other hand, AI is already part of the daily life of poster creators, another essential tool for promoting a film. “It opens up some pretty incredible possibilities, testifies Nicolas Cléry-Melin, co-founder of the Rysk agency, and creative director. We start with a photo from the film and we can boost it, relight it. These are things that just happened a few weeks, even a few months ago.”
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For the creation of the poster for the new adaptation of Miserable by Victor Hugo with, in the cast, Vincent Lindon and Camille Cottin, whose poster was released this week, artificial intelligence has made it possible “to add smoke and special effects”. The editors also wanted “modernize” THE Miserable : “There have already been a lot of adaptations and we are trying, with the colors, to arrive with a less gray, less dull result”explains Nicolas Cléry-Melin.
Contrary to popular belief, artificial intelligence does not save time, and therefore money. “No, not necessarily, believes the creative director. Because in fact, it takes time, a lot of time! It’s a tool that, in five seconds, can make anyone make a movie poster, but the problem is that this poster won’t be very well done and, above all, it will look like all the others. When generative AI arrived, we made proposals, around fifteen extremely well done, finalized images, which looked like a final product. We offered them to the client and, in our presentation, we had done one or two by hand. The customer directly chose the one that was drawn!”
À the image of the trailers, the tendency is to load the poster with more and more characters and key scenes from the film, in a vintage montage, popularized by a certain Drew Struzan, famous illustrator, who died in October 2025. We owe him the cult posters of Star Wars, E.T., Back to the futureor evenIndiana Jonesposters which decorated many teenagers’ rooms in the 1980s and 1990s. “There is a nostalgia for these films since it takes us back to a somewhat magical period, of all these very ‘popcorn’ films but which rocked our childhood and built our imagination around cinema.” Nicolas Cléry-Melin’s agency was inspired by this model for the film’s posters The Three Musketeersand also cites as an example the Netflix campaign for the series Stranger Things. “A system where we put the whole film on the poster”.
“The challenge is to make images that remain in a world where an image has an instantaneous lifespan.”
Nicolas Cléry-Melin, co-founder of the Rysk agencyà franceinfo
To counter this nostalgia, the Rysk agency is developing much more refined creations with, for example, the poster for Jacques Audiard’s latest film, Emilia Perez, presented at the Cannes Film Festival last year before being nominated 13 times for the Oscars. “It’s a poster which shows nothing, no face, no actor, but which calls on the viewer to imagine an original, baroque and slightly flashy universe”describes Nicolas Cléry-Melin, before summarizing the intention, going against the grain: “The less we show, the more enigmatic we are, the more we exercise the imagination and the brain, and the more we score.” An instantaneous lifespan for a poster thought out and designed, sometimes for more than a year.
