It's becoming increasingly more common in this digital media age for television series and movies to be leaked online before their intended release date. Networks and production companies are having difficulty ensuring that the media outlets they release screeners to aren't in turn releasing them to the public, or that even employees within their own organisations can be trusted to not do the same. The most recent, and possibly the most interesting to date, is the very early release of CBS's upcoming superhero drama Supergirl, which is based of off DC Comics.
The dust has barely settled on the 2015-2016 Upfronts in New York where the American free-to-air television networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX and NBC) unveiled trailers for their new series along with their schedules for the fall season to advertisers. Among them was CBS's Supergirl, which was one of the talked about trailers that was released. Superheroes are very hot property in the industry at the moment, and are not uncommon on CBS Corporation's other network The CW, which skews to very young demographic. Arrow, The Flash, and another upcoming new series Legends of Tomorrow, all air on The CW and are all under the development of Greg Berlanti, who has also developed Supergirl for CBS. What makes Supergirl's appearance on CBS so odd it that it traditionally receives audiences that are on the other end of the spectrum to The CW - much older viewers - so it is a bold move for the organisation to separate Supergirl from it's seminally-themed superhero series's and try to bring a new, younger audience to CBS, or even try to persuade their usual viewers to watch.
The trailer, which can be viewed above, polarised critics and audiences alike after its release. Fans of the comic, as always, already have doubts over the series' ability to honour its source material, particularly in regards to the character of Jimmy Olsen; again, as always, a discussion about the series representation of a female hero has come in to question; and there are already concerns over the tone of the series, considering the unlikely network on which it is airing. I personally felt, like many others who viewed the trailer, that is looked disturbing similar to Saturday Night Live's recent skit involving Scarlett Johanssen reprising her role as Black Widow from the Marvel movies, a parody spawned by audience reaction to the character in the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron movie and Marvel's Studio President Kevin Feige's comments in regards to female superheroes (see the trailer below, do you think it looks similar to Supergirl's?):
What anyone thought about the trailer for Supergirl, which was scheduled to premiere in November of this year, is superfluous, however, now that the entire pilot for the series has been leaked online six months early. At this early stage it's hard to know where the leak came from, but it is interesting to note that the pilot, which has already been downloaded over 200,000 times, was released in the highest resolution possible, 1080, and is not watermarked, which would usually identify which potential media outlet may have distributed it.
Due to this many have speculated that CBS themselves leaked the trailer, and who knows if that is true, but if it is, it is a brilliant marketing ploy. Why wait for six months as your most high-profiled new series is consistently bad-mouthed by critics and viewers leading up to its premiere, potentially pushing potential viewers away? Having Supergirl's pilot leaked was undoubtedly a good thing. Having watched the leaked pilot myself it is clear that the trailer did a very bad job at promoting the series and that it is much better than it makes seem. Melissa Benoist is an instantly likeable lead as the titular Supergirl, the pilot is very fast-paced, there is a bit of exposition (as there tends to be in pilots), but it's entertaining nonetheless, and most importantly the series has a lot of potential - setting up characters that could be great once they become a bit more refined, and entertaining serialised plot lines. Not only does the news of the leak itself ensure that Supergirl will be one of the few new series that we'll still be talking about a few weeks after upfronts, but if enough people watch the pilot for themselves CBS can rest assured that Supergirl will fly towards it's premiere in a much more positive light than it would have had the episode not been leaked at all.
