It seems like these days there are teasers for trailers, trailers for trailers and teasers at the beginning of trailers. While the trend appears to be towards short bite-sized clips for modern attention spans, yesterday it looked like Sony might be trying out a novel and bold approach by releasing what seemed like an awfully long trailer, some might say feature-length. Indeed, while Sony intended to post a red-band trailer for the movie Khali the Killer to YouTube, it accidentally uploaded the full hour and a half-long movie instead.
This mistake wasn't over quickly either, as the full movie of Khali the Killer was up on the Sony Pictures YouTube channel for hours before finally being taken down, according to Entertainment Weekly. This led some to speculate that the whole thing was a marketing stunt, yet there would be little to gain from giving the film away for free. So it seems more likely that somebody (possibly a now unemployed somebody) made a major mistake and uploaded the wrong thing. How that happened is anyone's guess. Maybe the files were mislabeled and the film was mistaken for the trailer. Why the film's file would even be accessible in such a way where it could be mistaken for the trailer is another matter. And whoever posted the film didn't notice that the upload was taking longer than it should and didn't bother to check it afterwards.
Khali the Killer is written and directed by Jon Matthews and stars Richard Kabral as Khali, an East L.A. hitman who takes one last job to help pay for his grandmother's end-of-life care. Matters are complicated when Khali begins to feel empathy for his victims. Although IMDb shows that Khali the Killer is getting some sort of domestic release on August 31, the film is already available to rent or purchase stateside on DVD or digital, so it's all a bit murky. But still, a lot of people got to watch this movie without paying for it, which I can't imagine Sony is too thrilled about.
If you're curious what you missed, you can check out the full trailer for Khali the Killer in the video below. Just be warned, this trailer is NSFW.
This accident is obviously a bit embarrassing for Sony and potentially a huge mistake for somebody, but it certainly could have been worse. Khali the Killer does not seem to be a theatrical release and was already out there in the world, so somebody could have seen it for free if they really wanted to. At least it wasn't a bigger theatrical release that people were actually aware of, like Sicario: Day of the Soldado, The Equalizer 2, or even worse, Venom.
Check out our release schedule to see all the movies hitting theaters this year and presumably not YouTube first. For all the latest in comedies of digital errors, stay tuned to CinemaBlend.
