YouTube's 25 Most Popular Trailers of 2011 (Unofficial)

By Dustin Rowles | Trailers | January 2, 2012 |

YouTube did not organize an official list of their most popular movie trailers of 2011, and that’s likely due to the fractured nature of YouTube videos. Views are split among many uploaders, and frequently, studios debut their trailers elsewhere such as Apple (for good reason, the ads on YouTube videos can be distracting). For instance, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games and The Amazing Spider-man trailers debuted elsewhere, otherwise the latter two would probably rank, while The Dark Knight Rises — the most watched trailer in the history of iTunes — would probably rank much, much higher. But for our purposes — filling space, killing time on January 2nd, observed as a national holiday that 40 percent of America still has to work on — this ranking will do fine.

A few notes of interest: Many of the trailers obviously track their huge box-office results (and their box-office potential in 2012), but it is interesting that several trailers — The Mechanic, Something Borrowed, I Am Number Four — were very popular despite the fact that the movies weren’t. Also of note, the third or fourth most popular trailer of 2011 was actually released in 2010: The Human Centipede, which has been seen over 13 million times now, or 13 million times more than the number of people who actually saw the movie.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2