The cleaning begins: YouTube brings down the kings of fake Marvel and Star Wars trailers
It’s over for two fake factories. The YouTube platform has finally taken radical measures against Screen Culture and KH Studio, two channels which have billions of views. How ? By misleading Internet users and the media with fake trailers, created by AI.
Perhaps you have been looking, these days, to see the trailer forAvengers: Doomsdaysince it was leaked. Or that of Spider-Man: Brand New Daywho suffered the same fate. And instead of coming across real trailers, which could have satisfied your curiosity as a fan, you probably came across bad videos.
We are talking here about fake videos, embellished with tempting thumbnails, which are only there to deceive Internet users, by riding on the popularity of certain major franchises (Marvel, Star Wars, James Bond, Avataretc.). Everything that is trendy or highly anticipated, whether in films or series, is now the subject of doctored videos.
These contents, described as “ slop » (poor quality AI-generated media), are the specialty of some YouTube channels. Their recipe? An indigestible cocktail mixing old works, images generated by AI, archives taken from other media and synthetic voice-overs. All of this, packaged under catchy titles.
KH Studio and Screen Culture: two YouTube channels that have gone too far
In this area, two channels particularly stood out: KH Studio and Screen Culture. But as Deadline reports in its December 18, 2025 edition, the party is over. YouTube has finally decided to remove these two channels for repeated violations of its rules regarding spam and misleading metadata.
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They had been in the platform’s sights for a while. Initially, they had certainly tried to calm things down after having suffered a serious first warning blow – the cut in advertising revenue. Following that, they added mentions like “ Concept » or « Fan Trailer » to demonstrate a newfound responsibility.
Good resolutions that didn’t last long. As soon as monetization was reestablished, the labels warning the public disappeared or, at the very least, became more discreet and rarer. Confusion has returned, among Internet users and among the recommendation algorithm. This recurrence has just come at a dear price, with the closure of the two channels.
« After their initial suspension, these channels made the necessary corrections in order to be readmitted (…) However, once they began monetizing their content again, they blatantly violated our rules again (…). They were therefore excluded from the platform », YouTube confirmed to The Verge.
The irony of the story, as Deadline showed, is that trailer forgers have long taken advantage of the laxity and tacit clemency of major studios. Rather than having these videos removed for copyright infringement, giants like Warner Bros. Discovery or Sony sometimes preferred to let it happen.
The reason? Money. Via the Content ID tool, studios could claim the advertising revenue generated by these millions of views. As long as the click was profitable, the misinformation took second place. It took the intervention of Disney, concerned about the massive use of its intellectual properties to train AI models, for zero tolerance to finally be applied.
From France 2’s shock to Del Toro’s anger
This big cleaning is coming a little late. The confusion maintained by Screen Culture and others has ended up going beyond the simple framework of gullible Internet users to affect professionals.
We remember the blunder of the France 2 news in 2024. The public channel had broadcast, in the greatest seriousness, false images of the film Superman: Legacy (coming precisely from Screen Culture) thinking that they were official. A sequence which caused hilarity on the web and “vomit” emojis from director James Gunn.
More recently, in January 2025, it was the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro who was to step up to the plate on social networks. Annoyed, he had to deny the existence of trailers for his adaptation of Frankensteinwhile dummy montages were already flooding the platform.
« The monster has been defeated », Confided a YouTuber to our American colleagues following the sanction. It remains to be seen for how long. On YouTube, when you cut off one head, the algorithm often tends to regrow two more. And by searching a little, you can quickly come across other channels of the same genre.
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