Is there a real word that means "pre-enact"?

I'd love to help, but I'm just not sure what a pre-enactment would be. Are you saying a pretend period before something actually happens? Then, in my opinion, it would be better to call it a rehearsal or a dry run.

But I would need to know more. You say that, for instance, a fictional movie about the future might include a "pre-enactment" of World War III. It's not really a "pre-enactment," since we don't know for sure that World War III will happen (and let's hope it doesn't). What you describe is speculative, so I'm troubled by the use of "enactment."

EDIT: This post was made before the author updated his original query to include a discussion of my ideas about 'rehearsal' and 'dry run.'

But you do raise an interesting word challenge: is there a word that describes a staging of things that we know for certain are going to happen?

For example, in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt," an integral part of the plot was the mayoral election between incumbent David Dinkins and challenger Rudy Giuliani. Since the episode was shot prior to the election, but would be aired after the election, two endings were shot: one with Dinkins being re-elected, the other (which was aired) with Dinkins losing to Giuliani.

So what would be the word that describes the two scenarios which were filmed prior to the election, an event which WAS guaranteed to happen? Is there even a word to describe that?

SECOND EDIT: I'm still troubled by your latest example. What happens after death is still entirely speculative. It could very well be that nothing happens after death. So to use the word 'enact' to describe a portrayal of what happens after death, in any sense, is to me inaccurate, because the event itself is not guaranteed to happen. But in that specific example, I'd call it a "speculative portrayal" rather than a pre-enactment.

I'd love you to come up with an example I can get behind...and then I'll get back to work on your behalf!

THIRD EDIT: Your new romantic comedy example certainly describes a rehearsal or a dry run (at least to me).

So this is an old post and it's possible no one will ever read this but:

Drill

• intensive instruction or training in something, typically by means of repeated exercises. "tables can be mastered by drill and practice"
• a rehearsal of the procedure to be followed in an emergency. "air-raid drills"
• informal; the correct or recognized procedure or way of doing something. noun: the drill "he didn't know the drill"

_{Oxford Dictionaries}

Typically used for military exercises or emergency procedures but could be generalized for anything you want to prepare for in advance. Drills also tend to be for smaller activities: you could run a drill for a bombing but you probably wouldn't run a drill for World War III (the latter being more of a war-game).

However, drills are typically quite serious and used to prepare for something serious which may not fit the 're-enactment by hobbyists' feel for which I fear you may be looking.

In the sense that you're using it, that of a staging of an event that hasn't happened yet, presented as being 'accurate', there's some precedent for pre-enactment. It's almost always presented as a joke. If you know how things are going to happen, accurately staging it for the benefit of others instead of just telling people, or trying to change the future/ensure it comes about is a very strange way to use this information.

Usually, though, it's implied that the version of events shown isn't a guaranteed accurate vision of the future. It's a prediction. (For instance, Back to the Future Part 2 predicts hoverboards and the political power of a boorish property tycoon.)