On 6 May 2025, Rockstar Games released the second official trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, a three-minute cinematic teaser introducing the full names of protagonists Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, the broader cast of supporting characters, and a richer view of the fictional state of Leonida. Within 24 hours of its multi-platform release, the trailer accumulated more than 475 million views across YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Rockstar's own properties — a figure that Rockstar confirmed exclusively to The Hollywood Reporter and which surpassed the previous record holder for the biggest video launch of all time, Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine trailer (Brzeski, 2025; Skrebels, 2025). The achievement marked a watershed moment for video game marketing, demonstrating that interactive entertainment can now eclipse Hollywood's biggest tentpole campaigns in terms of immediate, organic, audience-driven distribution.
The first GTA VI trailer, released on 4 December 2023 after being leaked hours earlier, had already broken the record for the most-viewed non-music YouTube video in 24 hours, reaching 93 million views on YouTube alone and becoming the most-liked game trailer in the platform's history (Wikipedia, 2026). However, that figure was measured primarily through YouTube's public counter. Trailer 2's 475 million figure was reported on a different basis — a cross-platform aggregate compiled by Rockstar — but the scale of the leap (more than 5x the YouTube-only 24-hour count for Trailer 1) signalled that anticipation had not just been sustained over the 17-month gap between trailers, but had intensified following multiple delays, leaks and the announcement of a 26 May 2026 release window (later pushed again to 19 November 2026).
The trailer dropped at 14:00 GMT on 6 May 2025, just six days after Rockstar publicly confirmed the game's delay into 2026 — a sequencing that some analysts read as a deliberate goodwill gesture to fans rattled by the slip (Collins and Richardson, 2025). It featured the Pointer Sisters' "Hot Together" as its anchoring soundtrack, alongside Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight," Tammy Wynette's "Talkin' to Myself Again" and Zenglen's "Child Support" — a curated playlist that drove a reported 182,000% spike in Spotify streams for "Hot Together" within hours (Brzeski, 2025).
The headline figure entered the public record through The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive reporting. Patrick Brzeski, writing on 7 May 2025, cited Rockstar Games directly: the publisher told THR that across "YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook and Rockstar Games' channels," Trailer 2 had been viewed "over 475 million times" in its first 24 hours, making it "the biggest video launch of all time" (Brzeski, 2025). THR explicitly framed the achievement against the previous benchmark — Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine teaser, which had set the cross-platform record in 2024 with a 365 million 24-hour view count — noting that GTA VI had exceeded that figure by roughly 30%.
THR's coverage emphasised three points beyond the raw number. First, it placed the result within the context of Take-Two Interactive's commercial strategy: a successful Trailer 2 was meant to stabilise investor confidence after the delay-driven stock drop. Second, it noted that the 475 million figure was unverifiable by independent third parties because much of the cross-platform aggregation was internal to Rockstar's reporting. Third, THR underlined the cultural significance: a video game trailer had now decisively overtaken the previous benchmarks set by superhero cinema, signalling a shift in the centre of gravity for global entertainment marketing (Brzeski, 2025).
The figure was rapidly amplified across the gaming and entertainment press. IGN's Wesley Yin-Poole reported the THR exclusive within hours, noting that Rockstar's claim of "the biggest video launch of all time" was accepted as plausible by industry observers given the publisher's track record of conservative public-facing announcements (Skrebels, 2025). Dexerto framed the trailer as "the fastest-growing video ever" and observed that the cross-platform total represented roughly one view for every 17 humans on Earth in a single rotation of the planet (Dexerto, 2025). Insider Gaming reported that the trailer's view count surged past 500 million within roughly 36 hours of release, suggesting the 475 million figure understated the true momentum at the moment of THR's publication (Insider Gaming, 2025).
ScreenRant offered a striking comparison frame: the 475 million view count exceeded the entire population of the United States (approximately 347 million per Worldometer at the time), by more than 100 million views — a vivid illustration of the trailer's global reach and the multiple-view-per-user behaviour driven by frame-by-frame fan analysis (Hatfield, 2025). GTABoom highlighted that while the trailer did not officially capture a Guinness World Record for the most-viewed YouTube video game trailer in 24 hours — because Guinness verifies only single-platform YouTube counts — the cross-platform aggregate was arguably "something far greater" in marketing terms (GTABoom, 2025).
The 475 million 24-hour figure recalibrated industry expectations for what a trailer launch could achieve. Prior to GTA VI Trailer 2, the benchmark was held by Hollywood — specifically Marvel — and the gap between film and games was assumed to favour cinema's mass-market reach. The Trailer 2 result reversed that assumption decisively. As Brzeski (2025) noted, the achievement was "a coronation moment for video games as the dominant pop-culture medium," with one publisher's promotional asset outperforming the marketing apparatuses of the world's largest film studios.
Rockstar's marketing for GTA VI has been characterised by extreme scarcity: between Trailer 1 (December 2023) and Trailer 2 (May 2025), the publisher released almost no new footage or screenshots. The 475 million result vindicated this approach. By starving the audience of content for 17 months while the leaked footage from 2022 continued to circulate, Rockstar engineered an event where the trailer's release functioned as a global cultural moment akin to a major film premiere or sporting final. Several commentators noted that this strategy was unique to Rockstar's position — only a publisher with GTA's entrenched cultural status could afford such silence without losing audience interest (Collins and Richardson, 2025).
The trailer's reception had measurable financial consequences. Take-Two Interactive's stock partially recovered the losses sustained after the delay announcement of late April 2025, as investors interpreted the engagement metrics as a leading indicator of preorder demand and launch-window sales. DFC Intelligence had previously projected first-year sales of 40 million units and $3.2 billion in earnings, including $1 billion in preorders (Wikipedia, 2026); the Trailer 2 reception was widely read as supporting the upper bounds of those projections. Competing publishers also took note: several large releases were quietly rescheduled in the weeks following Trailer 2 to avoid the late-2026 release window.
It is important to note that the 475 million figure is a publisher-reported aggregate and was not independently audited by Guinness or comparable third parties. Cross-platform view-count methodology varies — TikTok, for example, counts a view after a fraction of a second, while YouTube requires roughly 30 seconds — meaning direct comparisons with prior single-platform records are imperfect. THR acknowledged this in its original reporting (Brzeski, 2025).
The record itself proved short-lived in absolute terms: in March 2026, the first trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day was reported to have received over 500 million views within 12 hours and 718.6 million within 24, eclipsing Trailer 2's aggregate figure (Wikipedia, 2026). Nevertheless, GTA VI Trailer 2 retains its place in marketing history as the first non-film trailer to set the all-time cross-platform 24-hour record, and as the moment at which interactive entertainment was acknowledged — even by The Hollywood Reporter — as the equal of, and at times superior to, traditional Hollywood promotion in mass-audience reach.
The 475 million views in 24 hours achieved by Grand Theft Auto VI's second trailer represents far more than a marketing statistic. It is the empirical confirmation that GTA VI operates in a different category of cultural anticipation from any other entertainment property in the world today. The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive disclosure of the figure on 7 May 2025 framed the achievement as the largest video launch in history, surpassing Deadpool & Wolverine, and established a benchmark that drove industry-wide recalibration of expectations for game launches, trailer strategies and cross-platform engagement metrics. Whether or not the figure is precisely auditable, its impact on investor sentiment, competitor scheduling, and the broader perception of video games as a mainstream cultural force is unambiguous.
Brzeski, P. (2025) 'Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 Becomes Biggest Video Launch of All Time With 475 Million Views', The Hollywood Reporter, 7 May. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Collins, R. and Richardson, T. (2025) 'What have we learned from Grand Theft Auto 6's second trailer?', BBC News, 6 May. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2grmrx4po (Accessed: 7 May 2025).
Dexerto (2025) 'New GTA 6 trailer reportedly makes history as fastest growing video ever', Dexerto, 7 May. Available at: https://www.dexerto.com/gta/new-gta-6-trailer-reportedly-makes-history-as-fastest-growing-video-ever-3192949/ (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
GTABoom (2025) 'GTA 6 Trailer 2 Crushes Movie Records with Historic 475M Views in 24 Hours', GTABoom, 7 May. Available at: https://www.gtaboom.com/gta-6-trailer-2-sets-all-time-views-record-in-24-hours-e480 (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Hatfield, D. (2025) 'GTA 6 Trailer 2 Already Has More Views Than The Entire Population Of America', ScreenRant, 7 May. Available at: https://screenrant.com/gta-6-trailer-2-viewcount-more-than-american-population/ (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Insider Gaming (2025) 'GTA 6 Trailer 2 Has Already Hit Half a Billion Views', Insider Gaming, 8 May. Available at: https://insider-gaming.com/gta-6-trailer-2-half-a-billion-views/ (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
Skrebels, J. (2025) 'GTA 6 Trailer 2 the Biggest Video Launch of All Time, Rockstar Says', IGN, 7 May. Available at: https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-6-trailer-2-the-biggest-video-launch-of-all-time-rockstar-says (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Wikipedia (2026) 'Grand Theft Auto VI'. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).