This week we’re listening to the official trailer for the 2024 TIFF People’s Choice Award-winning film The Life of Chuck, directed by Mike Flanagan, based on a 2020 Stephen King novella. The trailer opens with a 5-second micro-teaser which shows the author of this story is Stephen King, but it's not horror. The micro-teaser is accompanied by a triumphant orchestral chord and percussion flourishes on the beat which align with the visual cuts, while we get glimpses of main characters including adult Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) dancing joyfully, and Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) laughing.

Him is a sports horror film produced by Jordan Peele, and its recent teaser trailer uses a blend of classical and electronic music which pivots from catchy to terrifying. After opening with the sound of a bank of stadium lights turning on, orchestral strings begin playing a single note, in octaves. The music gets louder as we see a claustrophobically close shot of a man’s face, eyes shut. Music cuts at 0:07 when the man opens his eyes. As fighter jets fly in formation high above a football stadium at 0:10, we hear a version of Bach’s “Badinerie” from the Orchestral Suite No. 2 enter with a pulsing rhythm and melody in B Minor.

Rockstar Games released a new trailer last week for Grand Theft Auto VI, which comes out in May 2026. The viral trailer (over 100 million views in its first week) features six songs, mostly used as diegetic or source music, edited to feel as though they could be coming from a car stereo and heard by the characters in the game. Still, the trailer narrates rather than demonstrates, so the immersivity of simulated gameplay has given way to storytelling, albeit winning players through nostalgia for earlier versions of GTA and the trailers’s impressive CGI and soundtrack.

Never count a karate kid out—forty-one years in, the Karate Kid franchise is making another comeback, some fifteen years after the reboot of the original 80s/90s tetralogy. This time, Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio reprise their roles from the original series, taking on more of an emeritus role as a new generation takes the lead, starring Ben Wang as martial arts student Li Fong.

In film trailers where the visuals are mesmerizing, a less-is-more approach to the soundtrack can be very effective. The recent trailer for Tron: Ares has only 5 lines of dialogue and the music is made up mostly of droning sustained notes, with brief snatches of pulsing electronic music. To be sure, for a Tron film, the music needs to be electronic - the whole premise of the film franchise is the interconnections between the real world and the digital world. And Tron: Legacy (2010) featured a soundtrack by EDM icons Daft Punk, while the original Tron (1982) had an electronic score by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos.

While we’re still about a year out from the next Avengers instalment, Marvel has a couple of big summer releases this year, beginning with the comedy-infused Thunderbolts. Best thought of as Marvel’s answer to DC’s Suicide Squad, here we see a gang of unlikely antiheroes rounded up to face a new threat in the absences of the Avengers (hence the asterisk in the title—“the Avengers are not available”).

Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon film franchise is about to join the recent trend of live action / computer graphic remakes of hit animated films (i.e. Snow White). Its official trailer, released in February, uses nearly every sound we’d expect from the trailer music repertoire, including massive drum accents, industrial droning synths, pulsing orchestral strings, sombre high register piano, and wordless choir - it’s all here (as well as the full plotline).

On March 26th, Marvel put out an unusual “Now In Production” video for an upcoming 2026 film in their Avengers franchise. In the expanding multiverse of Marvel films and television series, Avengers: Doomsday is a massive ensemble cast affair. The Avengers series of films began in 2012 with half a dozen heroes. Today, 35 MCU films and nearly as many Marvel tv series later, it becomes a major endeavour to put together an ensemble cast film representing those brand offshoots.

After a successful run in 2023, the video game adaptation The Last of Us returns this year as over 32 million viewers eagerly await what happens next with post-apocalyptic survivors Joel and Ellie.

Sikandar is an Indian action thriller, directed by A.R. Murugadoss, which tells the story of an underdog hero fighting against corruption (most other plot details have been kept a surprise until the film’s release). This teaser (the film’s second) has great energy and strong editing, with musical elements that connect it to Hollywood action music history–particularly 1970s blaxploitation films–blended seamlessly with Bollywood and Indian pop nuances. The music for this teaser was created by veteran Indian composer/songwriter Yuvan Shankar Raja.

Directed by Philip Barantini and starring Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, Adolescence is a British four-part miniseries about a young teenage boy accused of murder.

Andor is a Star Wars/Disney+ television series, set several years before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. Starring Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, its first season came out in 2022, along with an excellent score composed by Nicholas Britell. Season 2 of Andor has a trailer which prominently features country rocker Steve Earle’s 2004 song “The Revolution Starts Now.” A series depicting the characters involved in creating the Rebel Alliance—the primary threat to the Galactic Empire during the original Star Wars films—Andor is quite literally a film about the start of the primary revolution in the Star Wars canon.

In the world of remakes, this is a relatively obscure one—the 1993 Wedding Banquet was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, and it was filmed on a relatively shoe-string budget of $750,000, leaning heavily on publicly available locations. Thirty-two years later, Andrew Ahn (Driveways, Fire Island) revisits the story for the twenty-first century, trading previous sources of conflict (which focused more on societal norms) for interpersonal issues. Min (Han Gi-chan) wants to marry Chris (Bowen Yang), but will lose a large Korean multinational fortune as an inheritance if the family discovers he’s gay; Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are trying for a child through IVF, but can’t afford ongoing treatment. So, a deal is struck—Angela “marries” Min—a marriage of convenience, so to speak. The ruse is established, and hijinks ensue.

On tap this week is a new action thriller comedy and its K-pop soundtrack. The micro-teaser at the start of the official trailer for Novocaine has star Jack Quaid introducing himself to the audience. He then punches the camera, which cues the chorus riff from BLACKPINK’s 2020 mega hit “How You Like That.” All this happens in the first 6 seconds.

Every decade, it seems, The Fantastic Four returns in a new attempt to translate the Marvel comic book series to cinema—and after the dismally received pre-MCU and Fox outings, is the third time the charm? If Michael Giacchino’s score has anything to do with it, it just may be.

The official trailer for Questlove’s new documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) opens with a voice off-camera asking “Do you believe in the concept of Black genius?” Over the next 8 seconds, we hear that opening buildup from Sly & The Family Stone’s 1968 song “Sing a Simple Song” as we see clips of Sly Stone performing for adoring crowds, and shots of music legends interviewed for the film (André 3000, Chaka Khan, D’Angelo).

Directed by Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho and starring an initially unrecognizable Robert Patterson, the conceit for Mickey 17 is a kind of irreverence—we find out that Mickey Barnes must die, for a living.

The fifth film in the John Wick franchise explores the story of Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina-turned-assassin seeking revenge. Musically, the trailer cleverly juxtaposes scenes of violence on screen with the light-hearted sounds of Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s 1971 soft rock hit “Tiny Dancer.” Now, if you don’t know the song, check out its 2017 music video, featuring scenes of everyday life in Los Angeles (and say a prayer for the people of L.A.).

As the fourteenth major instalment of the franchise, Ubisoft is no stranger to the Assassin’s Creed series—as sturdy a franchise in video gaming as they come. For this go around, the studio has opted for the setting of 16th-century Japan, towards the end of Sengoku period.

22 years since Danny Boyle’s horror film 28 Days Later came out. And 17 years since that film’s sequel 28 Weeks Later. But who’s counting? Fans of the franchise might be, and they’re likely excited for the new trilogy of films in this franchise. The trailer for the first new film, 28 Years Later, is striking. The Guardian praises the trailer, saying it makes the film appear “just about the most exciting film of 2025.” Let’s find out why.