Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods

Some movies are loved by the people who make them and by the people who sell them, and they're still tough to open. Jim Fredrick, who ran the marketing on The Iron Giant at Warner Bros., sits down with producer Allison Abbate to talk about how the film was made, why it opened to just $5.7 million, and how it became one of the most beloved animated films ever. Takeaways Half the money, halfway thro...

Gerry Rich started planning his escape to Hollywood from a basement desk in the Midwest at age ten, and he went on to run marketing at Miramax, MGM, Paramount and Amazon MGM Studios. Now he's written it all down in Chasing Hollywood: A Marketing Chief's Lessons on Breaking Through , and he joins Corey to talk about the letters, the screamers, the twist nobody gave away, and why culture beats contr...

Opening Weekend: Selling Hollywood with Jim Fredrick continues on the TG&TG feed. This week Jim sits down with longtime friend and colleague Bryan Allen, the poster designer and former Paramount creative executive behind The Truman Show mosaic one-sheet. From cutting type by hand in the '80s to the thumb-stopping digital age, Bryan breaks down how a single still image helps a movie find its audien...

Opening Weekend: Selling Hollywood with Jim Fredrick continues on the TG&TG feed. This week Jim rides solo, revisiting the campaign he calls "the assignment of a lifetime": Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone . As senior vice president of creative advertising at Warner Brothers, he traces the campaign from an illustrated owl poster with no actors in sight to a $90 million opening weekend that tu...

Opening Weekend: Selling Hollywood with Jim Fredrick continues on the TG&TG feed. Barbara Glazer was one of our very first guests on this podcast, back in 2019. She's also one of the industry's true glass-ceiling breakers: co-founder of The Ant Farm, and the creative leader behind campaigns for Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Kill Bill among hundreds of others. She sits down with...

Trailer Park's doors are closed, but the tribute rolls on. Chapter 2 picks up as the shop outgrows Cahuenga, settles into the Santa Monica Boulevard building and then Ivar, and finally lands the industry rock star it had been courting for two years. Tim Nett, Benedict Coulter, Brett Winn, Ellie Speare, Charlotte Honess, and Charlie Austin trace how a scrappy comedy house grew into a full-service p...

Opening Weekend: Selling Hollywood with Jim Fredrick continues on the TG&TG feed. A soap marketer who'd never set foot in Los Angeles became the most successful studio head in movie history. Alan Horn ran Warner Brothers and then Disney, greenlighting Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, and the modern Marvel and Star Wars era. He sits down with Jim Fredrick to trace a 60-year career built on serendipit...

We're proud to introduce  Opening Weekend: Selling Hollywood with Jim Fredrick , starting with episode one right here on TG&TG! The most beloved movie on IMDb was, on opening weekend, a flop. Jim Fredrick, who cut the original trailer at Castle Rock, reunites with producer Liz Glotzer to unpack how The Shawshank Redemption got left at the box office and found its audience anyway. Takeaways: The ti...

It was so cool to get to hang out with Chris Daniel, the Senior Vice President of Global Creative Marketing at LionsGate. Prior to LionsGate, Chris led 360 marketing campaigns on some of Netflix's biggest films such as Red Notice, Glass Onion, Dayshift, To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Dolemite Is My Name, and Over The Moon. Previously, he edited and produced trailers, digital-social, and b...

Trailer Park's theatrical division has closed its doors, so we gathered five of the people who were there at the very beginning. Tim Nett, Jim Hale, Ann Mugglebee, Mike Southerly, and Tommy Gargotta trace the company from a single rented edit bay on Cahuenga to a sign you could spot from miles away. Part origin story, part reunion, and a fitting tribute to where it all started. In this episode: On...

Logan Gruidl is Senior Producer at Picture Head and the founder of The Trailer Brief, a bi-weekly newsletter covering trailer craft, industry news, and the campaigns shaping entertainment advertising. After coming up as an AE at Outpost and Grandson, Logan built his finishing expertise at Picturehead while quietly becoming one of the industry's most thoughtful new voices. Key Takeaways: The finish...

Monica Brady has spent 26 years doing something that didn't exist when she started: honoring the people who make movie trailers. Co-founded with her sister Evelyn on a boat to Fort Sumter in 1999, the Golden Trailer Awards grew from a scrappy DGA screening room show (running on two Avids, fingers crossed) into the industry's premier celebration of trailer craft. In this episode, Monica traces the...

Kris McDonald is a Creative Director and Senior Editor at XAV, and the founder of Behind the Trailer — a free educational platform dedicated to helping aspiring trailer editors break into the business and level up their craft. He came up through Open Road and Trailer Park before landing at XAV (which was Project X at the time), where he's built a career cutting campaigns for major studio and strea...

Before founding Rubber Sole Creative, Stav Ozdoba came to the U.S. with one goal: become a filmmaker. Within months, he was in meetings to direct a feature. Not long after, he learned just how brutal that path could be. What followed wasn't a straight line. It was a pivot. From indie films to editing weddings. From teaching himself Final Cut to landing at Sony. From cutting sizzles and promos to l...

Before Benj Thall was cutting trailers at some of the most influential shops in the business, he was a working child actor starring in Disney's Homeward Bound films alongside legends like Leslie Nielsen and Ned Beatty. That early life on film sets didn't just give him screen credits — it gave him a love for every corner of the craft that eventually led him behind the camera, through film school at...

Jordan Hayman has sat in almost every seat in this industry. Jumbotron editor for the Lakers during their championship run. Creative executive at Alkemi, working indie theatrical. Client-side at Lifetime under the legendary Bob and Lew. Broadcast division builder at AV Squad. And now, founder of The Shop, the boutique he always knew he'd build from the moment he was running packages around town fo...

What does it sound like when a trailer editor thinks in rhythm, builds in silence, and treats every scene break like a musical beat? Lead editor Lauren Zoller of X/AV traces her path from a Chapman BFA to a Lionsgate internship, through Ignition (where she shadowed some of the greats) and nearly nine years at Mocean before landing at X/AV in 2021. She's become one of the most versatile editors in...

What happens when a technology-minded New Yorker stumbles into Hollywood and ends up reshaping how the industry makes trailers, title sequences, and motion graphics for the next three decades? This week, Eric Ladd joins the show to talk about his winding path from floppy disk drives and Bank of America to running Novocom, building Pittard Sullivan into a global powerhouse, and founding Picture Mil...

What does it take to break into the trailer business, survive the agency grind, and help shape campaigns for some of the biggest films of the last two decades? This week on Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods , we sit down with Creative Director, Producer and Creative Executive Kazadi Katambwa to discuss craft, career, and creative instinct. Kazadi walks through his journey from film-loving college stud...

What do trailers, legendary movie posters, streaming era strategy, and a deep love for theatrical storytelling have in common? This week on Trailer Geeks & Teaser Gods , Corey is joined by Debi Struzan and Dana Flowers-Mitchell for a deeply personal conversation about careers shaped by creativity, collaboration, and conviction. From Debi's early days at Seiniger Advertising and her connection to t...

What does it mean to truly feel a trailer—and how do you translate that feeling into something that moves an audience? In this Best Of Trailer Geeks & Teaser Gods episode, Corey Nathan revisits his wide-ranging, deeply personal conversation with Robert Walker , one of the most influential and respected trailer editors working today. From his early experiments with cassette-tape collages and experi...

What does it take to market movies that shape culture—and to lead with integrity when the stakes are highest? In this Best Of Trailer Geeks & Teaser Gods episode, Corey Nathan revisits his powerful conversation with Dwight Caines , President of Domestic Marketing at Universal Pictures and one of the most respected voices in modern film marketing. One of our "best of's" since we brought this progra...

What do VHS edits, a childhood trumpet, and a passion for story-driven design have in common? This week on Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods , Corey Nathan sits down with Greg Krupka , Vice President and Creative Director at AV Squad , to unpack a path paved with relentless creativity, smart collaboration, and iconic trailer moments. From his early days at Emerson College to cutting theatrical campaig...

From Strings to Screens: Aaron Gershman's Journey Across AV, Digital, and Design How does a former rock guitarist with zero design training become a creative force behind some of the most visually stunning and emotionally resonant film campaigns of our time? This week on Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods , Corey Nathan sits down with Aaron Gershman , SVP of Creative Advertising at Lionsgate, whose jou...

Between the Beats: From Texas Roots to Trailer Rhythms What does it take to edit trailers that breathe emotion, humor, tension, and awe—all in a few short minutes? This week, we sit down with Shea Jones , a self-proclaimed "rhythm cutter" whose musical instincts have defined some of the most memorable trailer moments of the last decade. Shea shares his origin story—from math-loving student in San...