It’s December, and while our minds go to the frozen North Pole and the magical beings who live there, let’s check out a trailer for a great new Canadian comedy series called North of North. Anna Lambe stars as Siaja, a modern Inuk woman who has split from her self-absorbed husband and is on a roller coaster journey of self-discovery. The trailer opens with Siaja introducing herself. From 0:01-0:10, Siaja’s voiceover introduces us to the stunning landscapes of Nunavut, accompanied by clicking percussion and shaker sounds, with visual cuts synched to accents on big drums. The music breaks at 0:10 to the sound of a wolf howl.

The latest project from acclaimed American director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) reunites him with Michael B. Jordan as together, they take on the horror genre.

Musically, I was surprised a few times in the recent Captain America: Brave New World Official Trailer. Dipping into electronic music and even free jazz, this action film trailer is characteristically tense, minimalist, and it sports a healthy blend of barren and bombastic sound textures.

While maybe an obvious choice, the instrumental bridge from Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” is used both imaginatively and economically in the trailer for The Bad Guys 2. It leverages the so-obvious-it’s-quite-good-actually intertextual association, while also introducing a slate of variations on the simple and catchy melodic motif of the tune so as to maintain momentum and audience interest throughout.

All I want for Christmas is a remake of a 1920s German gothic vampire film? The official trailer for Nosferatu opens with the sound of a music box in time with a ticking clock, as we slowly zoom out from a shot of a wide-eyed Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) falling backward in slow motion. As Ellen lands on her back at 0:06 there’s a deep impact sound that also evokes thunder. At 0:08 the melody is picked up by an expressive instrument reminiscent of a theremin.

The trailer for the plainly-titled Moana 2 dropped this past summer, focusing more on dialogue and exposition than any particular musical conceit or foregrounded editing decisions—as a result, it’s a trailer that feels safe, if not entirely memorable. Still, the music here fulfils its task and gives a clear indication of what people can expect from the soundtrack, so there’s something to be said for an edit and music supervision choices that wear a kind of honesty to them.

The remix of Peter Schilling’s 1989 new wave song “Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst)” in last week’s official trailer for the Lucasfilm/Disney+ series Skeleton Crew automatically connects it to the sci-fi action comedy genre, evoking the classic rock aesthetic of films like Borderlands or Thor: Love and Thunder.

Best known for films such as the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Here finds Robert Zemeckis reuniting with Gump colleagues such as Tom Hanks, Robert Wright, cinematographer Don Burgess, and composer Alan Silvestri for the first time since that mid-90s classic.

The trailer for Season 2 of Apple TV’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi series Silo opens with a breathy synth tone over the title card. Then from 0:03-0:05 there is a sped up ticking clock sound accompanying an animated spiraling staircase, in reference to the only means of passage in the silo. Then there is a low impact sound as we arrive at a close up on main character Juliette Nichol’s face (Rebecca Ferguson) at 0:06.

In the film music world, it’s fair to say there isn’t a greater living legend than John Williams; his scores have graced movie theatres across almost seven decades (from 1958’s Daddy-O to 2024’s Indian Jones and the Dial of Destiny). It only takes a couple of notes for Williams to weave magic from thin air—evidenced by the famous semitone motif for Jaws that plays about eleven seconds into the trailer.

With Netflix as the dominant streaming platform globally, and Squid Game one of its most popular series ever, anticipation is mounting for the December 26th launch of Season 2. We blogged about Squid Game’s Season 2 I Welcome Players trailer back in August, and since then Netflix has been releasing trailers for the new season left, right, and centre. Today I’ll dive into the “Season 2 | You’re Invited” trailer released September 30th.

After a broad, symphonic opening with light strings for the first fifteen seconds and some expository monologue, the first strums to Timothée Chalamet’s cover of “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” (written by Dylan in the summer of 1962 and released in 1963) begin to emerge. As the off-screen narrator suggests Dylan (Chalamet) is “a glimpse of the future”, we see a view of him playing in the room, and we hear the iconic voice.

Are you under 15 years of age in North America? If so, chances are you’ve heard of the wildly successful Dog Man graphic novel series by Dav Pilkey. For those of you who haven’t you can soon experience the story on the silver screen, in claymation. The new Dog Man trailer opens with a five second microteaser featuring the vocal hook from Daft Punk’s 2001 song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

Many Pixar movies operate under the premise of “what if (insert character here) had feelings?”—and as it turns out, Dreamworks can do it just as well, thank you very much. As the sonic design and soundtrack for The Wild Robot’s second trailer would indicate, the studio continues to veer towards more nuanced animated water, as opposed to, say, Illumination fare. Through a combination of sombre yet heroic musical fare and some editing conventions of comedy trailers, The Wild Robot appears to attempt to have it both ways—and the success of that approach is up for debate.

The teaser trailer for A Minecraft Movie is cut to a remix of the 1967 classic “Magical Mystery Tour.” From deep in The Beatles’ psychedelic era, this song is a prime choice for a film that presents like some bewildering drug trip through an 8-year old’s favourite video game. While the film’s teaser trailer from last week has gone viral, criticism of the film’s concept and choice of Jack Black as Steve has been pouring in.

Lauded as a career milestone for Demi Moore after its premiere at Cannes film festival with a 13-minute ovation, The Substance is body horror at its best (or is that worst?).

In an epic cross-cultural collaboration, director Kenji Kamiyama has answered the question “What if The Lord of the Rings were anime?” For the first 17 seconds of this trailer, the orchestral brass play Howard Shore’s resounding Riders of Rohan theme as we see six live action shots of Gandalf and company galloping in Rohan, from The Two Towers.

After three years, Squid Game returns to Netflix with the original deadly game show’s winner, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae)—as known at Player 456—returning to the game with the intent of finding its mastermind and ending it altogether.

The world has changed immensely since 1937, so the production team creating the new live action Snow White walk an unenviable tightrope in honouring a classic tale while making the storyline relevant and palatable to modern audiences. It comes on the heels of the “live action” Lion King (called Mufasa - due out in December), at a time when Disney seems intent on mining its catalogue in light of recent misfires in the realm of original animated movies (e.g. Elio and Wish).

For this soft reboot of the Alien franchise, while the first thirty seconds or so of the trailer go without music on the soundtrack, opting for a focus on sound effects which emphasizes the emptiness of space, by 0:32 we hear strains of the vocal from “You Are My Lucky Star”, from 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, leading to a haunting cover version of the track.