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Recycled Trailer Music
aka: The Elfman Effect

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"Listening to it now, I'm a bit surprised I got away with such nutty music for a coming attraction. Of course, those days are long gone... as all trailers now seem to be mandated by law to be beefed-up variations of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana..."
Danny Elfman, on the music written for the trailer of Mars Attacks!

When releasing a film to the public, the film's score is usually the very last thing to be completed. This means that there will be enough finished scenes to make a trailer, but no soundtrack yet. What's a studio to do?

Slap in some music from another film, stock music, or even a pop song, that evokes the general mood they're going for, that's what.

The first film of a franchise is most likely to use this trope, whereas trailers for future films tend to reuse music from the previous ones. For example, most Star Wars trailers after A New Hope used portions of John Williams' score for that film, whereas the original trailer for A New Hope used stock music! Once the score is completed, the studio might release a new batch of trailers using the film's own music. Alternatively, if a new film is from the same creative team or production company behind a recent hit, the music might be excerpted from the hit's soundtrack, as when an instrumental version of "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast underscored TV ads for Pocahontas, for instance. By The New '10s, this trope became a Discredited Trope as more and more trailers began to use popular and/or licensed stock library music. Even franchises used new arrangements of their established themes instead of recycling the same tracks.

Licensed music made entirely for trailers by groups like Two Steps from Hell and used to advertise several unrelated products is not an example of this trope as that's just stock library music. Also not part of this trope are classical compositions or songs initially released as just... well, music, take those examples to Standard Snippet and/or Stock Trailer Music.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 

    Anime 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 

    Video Games 

    Western Animation 
  • The pre-series trailer for The Lion Guard had the entrance theme of the late WWE superstar Umaga playing during it at one point.

Alternative Title(s): The Elfman Effect

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