It’s a snack attack.
Gimmicky popcorn buckets have become all the rage as part of blockbuster releases, and after the viral “Dune: Part Two” bucket, a new movie is entering the fray: “Mission: Impossible.”
Regal Cinemas revealed via Instagram that “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” will have a novelty popcorn bucket.
The souvenir includes a complicated two-part key to open it – as a nod to a plot point in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” which follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) as he tries to get a special key to control a dangerous artificial intelligence entity.
The Tom Cruise thriller is just the latest movie to join the rising trend. Ryan Reynods – whose movie “Deadpool & Wolverine” also had a tie-in novelty popcorn bucket, declared on Twitter last May, “Years from now they will look back at 2024 as the year the War of the Popcorn Buckets began.”
The trend exploded with the obscene-looking “Dune: Part 2” popcorn bucket that vent viral months earlier. It got so much attention, that even “Saturday Night Live” wrote a sketch about it for a Feb. 2024 episode.
The movie’s stars also reacted to it.
“It’s not OK,” Florence Pugh told ET in Feb. 2024.
“I would be really curious to know what the discussion was around that,” Timothée Chalamet chimed in. “Somebody might be mortally offended right now about the reaction to this — or someone’s going, ‘This is exactly how I planned it!’”
“From a marketing perspective, I guess it’s kind of genius,” Zendaya added. “You’re like, ‘OK, I got to have one, I guess.’”
A much as critics mocked the Dune bucket, it worked to generate buzz around the movie — a sketch on “SNL” is the kind of attention publicists dream about. It remains in high demand, as its resale value on eBay is over $800.
Rob Bennett, the director of food and beverage product strategy at AMC, told Time in a 2024 interview that the buckets – which range from $20 to $65 each – have become such a key part of the modern blockbuster experience that major directors have started weighing in.
Bennett revealed that Tim Burton weighed in on the novelty movie theater cup that was a tie-in to his 2024 movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” James Cameron even had “final approval” on the Avatar tie-in popcorn bucket.
These buckets have become popular in part because they bring in extra revenue to theaters, which have been struggling in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Post-Covid, we realized that the eventizing of cinema has never really been as important as it is now,” Paul Farnsworth, executive director of communication and content at B&B Theatres, told CNBC.
He explained, “We recognized during that time that the greatest casualty for our industry was people just fell out of the habit of going to movies.”
Items like novelty popcorn buckets are incentives to make crowds want to be part of the movie-going experience, rather than waiting for the flick to hit streaming a few months later.
“It is very good for the bottom line,” he said. “The big value for us is that people come in and there’s these fun things they get to take home and they’re taking pictures with them in the theater. There’s immense value in that.”
According to CNBC, AMC Entertainment didn’t sell any merchandise just three years ago. By contrast, last year in the midst of the popcorn bucket trend resurgence, they raked in about $65 million in revenue from merchandise that included novelty popcorn buckets.
They purposefully make the buckets feel exclusive, with a small supply.
“Once we’re through that initial week, we see sales drop off, so we try to hit that perfect number,” Bennett told Time. “Our goal is to sell out Sunday afternoon.”
Popcorn buckets aren’t new, but they’ve gotten more popular than ever within the past two years.
“To be 100% honest, it was ‘Barbie,’” Matt Willard, head of business development at Regal Cinemas, told the outlet, referring to all the tie-in merchandise that helped make the 2023 movie a phenomenon.
In an April interview with The Post, brand expert Zoe Kessler cited the “Barbie” movie as an example of a movie that did a “phenomenal job” with its brand partnerships.
The Margot Robbie film had a dizzying array of tie-in brands, including Pinkberry frozen yogurt, fashion brands such as Pac Sun, Nyx makeup, Funboy pool floats, and more.
The movie raked in over $1 billion at the box office worldwide, making it a smashing hit that others are eager to replicate.
“There was the convertible car, which unfortunately a rival had,” Willard told Time. “But we had the popcorn container that looks like the box that Barbie comes in with the clear front. It really opened our eyes to the potential of these items.”
He explained that they don’t have tangible numbers showing if the popcorn buckets increase ticket sales, but, “based on the amount of feedback we get through the customer service department asking when this or that container is coming out, I would think, yes, it is driving that customer to come to our theater.”
