Great Moments in M83 Movie-Trailer Promotion

With another movie trailer — the Chloe Moretz teen weepie "If I Stay" — featuring M83's sweeping music as a score, it's maybe time to take stock of the current state of the M83 media takeover.

Today saw the release of the latest trailer for R.J. Cutler's If I Stay. The film is an adaptation of Gayle Forman's YA novel about a young girl (Chloe Grace Moretz in the film) narrating her out-of-body experience following a car crash. And while YA is so hot right now, with The Fault in Our Stars poised to prey on teen emotions, this trailer didn't follow the Fault/Perks of Being a Wallflower template, instead taking its cues from a different recent trailer trope.

If that music sounds familiar, it should. It's M83's "Outro," the closing track from their 2011 album Hurry Up We're Dreaming. It's a captivating piece of music with a crescendo that is timed perfectly to fit the length of an average movie trailer. Which is why it's used a lot. Most prominently, and to best effect, the track was used in the extended first trailer for the Wachowskis' and Tom Tykwer's ambitious Cloud Atlas ...

Depending on how you feel about Cloud Atlas, the trailer just might be the best part of the movie, and it's the M83-scored final third that really sells it. No surprise, then, that the track has been used again since, including in the trailer for the Australian film Tracks with Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver ...

The song's appeal couldn't possibly stay isolated to simply movie trailers, of course. It soon showed up, as most perfectly malleable pieces of music do, on So You Think You Can Dance ...

This is all part of the M83 modus operandi when it comes to promoting their songs. "Midnight City," the top single off of Hurry Up We're Dreaming, showed up in everything from Victoria's Secret ads to HBO's 24/7 series about the NHL's Flyers and Rangers to the closing scene of an episode of HBO's How to Make It in America ...

And really, is there any better promotional opportunity than scoring a Gina Gerson makeout session? The answer to that is a clear and resounding "no."

Oh, you want more movie trailers? There's the 2012 Marion Cotillard film Rust and Bone, which featured M83's "My Tears Are Becoming a Sea" ...

Or perhaps the 2013 French sex comedy You and the Night, directed my Yann (brother of Anthony) Gonzalez and featuring M83 music in both the film and the trailer ...

Just don't ask us to explain how we didn't get a trailer for Oblivion featuring the M83 score that was the best part of the movie. No wonder that movie disappointed at the box-office.