The Tool Nobody Saw Coming: Fan Edits

By Natalie Morgan

Account Executive

If you’ve been on TikTok over the past six months, you’ve probably stumbled upon well-crafted videos that combine clips from television shows, movies, or even celebrity interviews. Often, they include precise editing set to a song that perfectly captures the clips on the screen. These videos, known as fan edits, have taken social media by storm. 

While fan edits have existed on other platforms for years, they often went unnoticed to anyone not looking for them. However, platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have made it easier for fans to discover these edits through their algorithms. Algorithms help platforms recognize their users' interests, feeding them media from shows, movies and celebrities the user is likely to have an interest in. 

Photo Courtesy of Mashable

It is not just algorithms shaping the influx of fan edits. TikTok specifically has features on its app to help users create their own edits. Editing tools are now in the hands of a broader audience, encouraging people from all niches to creators in their own right.

These fan edits serve as free advertising and publicity for the central figures of their video. As their reach and influence continue to grow, companies like Lionsgate have embraced the trend, creating their own edits and incorporating them into social media marketing campaigns to target Gen Z.

Currently pinned on the official Lionsgate TikTok is an edit for the new Hunger Games film, which is releasing in theaters on Nov. 20, 2026. The edit, posted on November 20th, 2025, set to JMSN’s song “Love Me” and featuring clips from the movie teaser posted that same day, has over 7.4 million views and 1.1 million likes on the platform. 

The comment section, filled with over 2700 responses, includes high praises for the strategy: “I'm sorry, but we will NEVER have a marketing team as good as Lionsgate in this lifetime,” wrote user lucykate66. Their comment itself has over 101k likes. 

Lionsgate’s TikTok, headed by Felipe Mendez, hired 15 TikTok editors to create consistent edits for their social media pages in late 2025. But it isn’t just television and movie marketing that use the fan-edited video style on their social media pages. 

The official Democratic Party’s TikTok page is filled with edits that promote and/or discourage various aspects of our current political climate and politicians. One edit posted on March 10 of this year patches together different clips of President Donald Trump along to Green Day's “American Idiot.” This edit has over 2 million likes and 10.4 million views. 

Companies are harnessing the power of fan edits to communicate with Gen Z audiences in a way that feels comfortable and enticing. It is everything audiences could want in a social media campaign. 

However, fan edits remain in fans' hands. The greatest edits are not found on Lionsgate or Democratic Party TikToks; they are created by fans who understand the material on a deeper level and choose to make something meaningful for themselves and their community. Fan edits will not disappear when companies no longer produce them, and this may be their best quality. After all, who doesn’t want free publicity?