The thing is it hasn’t come out in the official twitter acct or the CW site hasn’t been updated so more reasons to think it’s fake.

Also, the timing as mentioned above is very fast. Either that would explain how bad it is or that it truly is fake.

-The background is clearly photoshopped. If it real, that means they were standing in front of a green screen which isn’t unusual but they’ve never done a so-obviously fake background before.

-As you mentioned, the positioning is weird. It’s also weird Mouth and a few others were left out, considering they were in last year’s photo and are still on the show. It could be that they want to focus the promos more on the new characters.

-But, it is clear each individual actor is photoshopped into the image. I can’t see why they would do that when they definitely would’ve taken a group shot. Now, these could be the legit individual pics that, somehow, leaked and someone put together *or* they could be photos taken from somewhere and we just don’t realize it.

-I know the shoot was very recent, but it is possible the photos are ready already since they would just need to print them, touch them up, and get approval from some of the execs. Plus, they are way late on doing this so it’s possible they even rushed to get them out.

Bottom line: they don’t look real to me and none of the mainstream sites have posted it, which makes it more suspicious. Time will tell for sure!