Super Bowl LI will go down in history for the Patriots’ massive comeback, but for film fans it’ll also be remembered for giving us a wide range of awesome trailers. There was a lot to get through, from the first look at Stranger Things Season 2 to exciting expansions of already hyped movies.

But which was the biggest hit? Unlike typical trailer releases where the individual views are easy to measure even across various video platforms, it’s nigh-on-impossible to distinguish between the different trailers that air during the big game and figure out which one had the most people watching. However, to get an idea of which ones had the largest impact we can look at the number of mentions across social media.

According to comScore (as reported by Variety), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’s team-up teaser won the night with over 47,800 new conversations across social platforms. In second place was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales on 25,200 new conversations, followed by Transformers: The Last Knight on 19,700, The Fate of the Furious on 16,300 and Logan on 10,200. The other big Super Bowl movies - Baywatch, Ghost in the Shell and Life - all had less than 10,000 conversations started by their new footage.

This is obviously very good news for Disney, who are distributing the top two movies; this level of pre-release hype in the face of stiff competition predicts big things for movies already expected to do well at the box office. Guardians 2, whose trailer highlighted the team and its new members, is following up one of Marvel’s biggest hits - the original made $773 million worldwide despite being an unknown property - and expected to dominate Summer 2017. Pirates 5, meanwhile, gave our first look at Johnny Depp returning as Captain Jack and given that previous franchise entry Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides made over $1 billion despite middling reviews, it too is one to watch.

It’s worth noting that these two films were always more likely to benefit from a Super Bowl push as there’s been comparatively little footage released previously, so there’s a hunger for new information. Other films had already made a splash previously; Transformers: The Last Knight had released the first half of its TV spot the day before the big game and Logan is already well into its marketing campaign, so new footage is less likely to wow. That still shouldn’t take away from the impressive extent of Guardians 2’s dominance, though.

It cost $5 million for every 30 seconds of airtime during the game itself, which means some of these adverts will have set the studios back upwards of $10 million. Although with the potential gross these social numbers point towards, it was worth every penny.

Source: Variety

  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Release Date: 2017-05-05 Pirates of the Caribbean 5 Release Date: 2017-05-26 Transformers: The Last Knight Release Date: 2017-06-21 Fast and Furious 8 Release Date: 2017-04-14 Wolverine 3 Release Date: 2017-03-03