Why Are Movie Previews Called 'Trailers?'
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The newest trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi is generating a lot of buzz since its debut during halftime of Monday's Vikings-Bears game.
That had Eric from Minneapolis wondering: Why are movie previews called trailers? Good Question.
Back in the 1900s, movie theaters only had one screen. Moviegoers would pay their 5 or 10 cents to sit in a theater all day. Movies and cartoons would run in a loop.
But, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln Film Studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon, the first trailer happened in 1913 when Nils Granlund, an advertising manager for a theater chain, produced a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers.
Movie theaters and companies thought this was a great idea and copied it. At the time, trailers are more like teasers and were put at the end of movies to get people to come back for more. They "trailed" the movies.
By the 1930s, the movie producers realized they'd have a larger audience if they showed the trailers before the movie. The name, though, stuck.