Neglect popcorn buckets. What about unique jackets tied to December’s hippest movie?
Hollywood struck gold by pairing new releases with specialty popcorn buckets.
Our Avatar: Fireplace and Ash Banshee popcorn bucket is now accessible in theatres! pic.twitter.com/t9QpRTxTti
— Cinemark Theatres (@Cinemark) December 2, 2025
At a time when the theatrical expertise seems wobbly and streamers aren’t cashing in as anticipated, the excellent news proved greater than welcome.
Collider famous how BucketMania is boosting the movie business.
The eventizing of films has at all times been a precedence, each for studios and theater chains; the extra a film is ingrained into popular culture— whether or not or not it’s via memes, promoting, or in any other case— the extra informal audiences really feel the necessity to enterprise out to the cinema. No person needs FOMO, and popcorn buckets present that additional incentive to get even the most important sofa potatoes out of the home for the most recent Hollywood epic.
However why cease there?
“Marty Supreme” star Timothée Chalamet not too long ago appeared at a stylish New York retailer to advertise his Dec. 25 movie. And, within the course of, he helped hawk fancy jackets tied to the Josh Safdie movie.
… the road to purchase “Marty” merch snaked again for over two blocks, slowly funneling the throng to buy $250 wind-breakers and $95 sweatpants bearing the title of a film that the majority, if not all of them, won’t see till it’s launched on Christmas Day.
You’ll be able to’t simply drop an A-list star like Chalamet into dozens of cities, in fact. However the Large Apple occasion seemingly acquired a lift from social media customers sharing clips from the looks.
Chalamet isn’t the one star to attempt the pop-up strategy.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, enjoying a married couple within the somber romance “Tune Sung Blue,” broke out their pipes in, the place else, New York Metropolis earlier this week.
The duo dropped in on the Aussie pub Previous Mates the place the couple crooned a number of numbers from the Neil Diamond songbook. “Tune Sung Blue” (Dec. 25) follows a Diamond tribute band via the ups and downs of their middle-aged careers.
The occasion drew extra star energy, together with appearances by Chris Rock, Christian Slater and Zoey Deutch.
Hollywood entrepreneurs are scrambling to make motion pictures “occasions,” very like the mania surrounding “Barbenheimer” two years in the past. Popcorn buckets tied to flashy movies nudged Hollywood in that path.
It additionally helps to get a social media push, a la “A Minecraft Film’s” signature scene from earlier this 12 months.
That form of digital synergy is all however inconceivable to foretell. Pop-up occasions, as compared, give entrepreneurs an opportunity to catch social media lightning in a bottle.
So, you’re saying there’s an opportunity…
Now, examine that to a once-common apply of flying stars hither and yon to advertise their tasks. This journalist interviewed dozens of stars in each D.C. and Denver over the previous 20-odd years. The actors would fly in for a day, chat with a dozen or extra native journalists, then jet off to a different mid-sized metropolis to repeat the method.
If that apply continues, it now excludes Denver. It’s extra seemingly that stars embrace digital press conferences as an alternative, the place advertising and marketing groups have extra management over the stream of questions and journey prices are minimal.
Instances change. So does Hollywood advertising and marketing. We’ll should see how folks react to viral movies tied to latest pop-up occasions to be taught if extra stars will seem in a metropolis close to you … or simply the Large Apple.