Why movie theater popcorn buckets keep getting stranger

Movie theaters are now selling popcorn buckets and drink cups that look like novelty items from an adult store, and they're doing it to promote some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. Every time it seems they've come up with the most ridiculous bucket imaginable, another movie comes along that makes the last one look tame. In my view, the reason they keep getting bigger, stranger and more suggestive comes down to money, and to a struggling business learning that a bucket can sell a movie.

Why movie theaters need popcorn money more than ticket money

Movie theaters have had a rough time lately. With the rise of Netflix and countless copycats, audiences can reach thousands of movies without leaving the couch. When the pandemic hit, theaters had to shut down, and when they reopened, many people never went back. Theaters sold hundreds of millions fewer tickets in 2025 than they did in 2019, which is a problem when your business revolves around selling tickets.

Except theaters don't make nearly as much from tickets as you might think. At least half of every ticket goes back to the studio that made the film. The theater still has to pay its employees and its rent, maintain its equipment and keep the lights on.

That's why concessions are so expensive. Theaters don't have to split popcorn, drink and candy revenue with the studios, so they raise the prices. A bag of popcorn costs a theater less than a dollar, but they sell it to you for 10, which I think is insane. That's how they make money.

How AMC's R2-D2 bucket for Rise of Skywalker started the trend

With attendance declining, theaters were trying to work out how to make more money while making movies feel like events again. They looked to theme parks like Disney and Universal, which had been selling collectible popcorn buckets and souvenir drink cups for years. Theaters were hesitant, though, partly because they worried the cups wouldn't fit in the cup holders.

In 2019, AMC took a chance on an R2-D2 two in one popcorn and drink container for the release of Rise of Skywalker and charged 50 dollars for it. To the chain's surprise, people bought it. AMC sold 30,000 of them opening weekend, generating nearly 1.5 million dollars in revenue for a bucket of popcorn.

That's when theaters realized what theme parks had figured out years earlier. People weren't buying these for the popcorn. They wanted a souvenir they could take home.

Thor, Ant-Man, Scream and Barbie buckets after the pandemic

COVID put the whole thing on hold. When theaters reopened, people had gotten comfortable watching at home, and getting them back wasn't easy. So AMC turned to the popcorn bucket. In 2022 it released a bucket shaped like Thor's hammer for Love and Thunder, and the following year one shaped like Ant-Man's helmet for Quantumania, selling 20,000 on the first day alone.

Once other chains saw the results, they wanted in. Cinemark released a Scream bucket shaped like Ghostface's head, which sold out almost immediately and caught the company off guard. Demand was so high that it ended up selling more of them online.

Regal wanted to make a Barbie bucket shaped like her pink convertible, but AMC beat it to the punch. Regal instead made a container that looked like the box a Barbie doll comes in, complete with a clear plastic window on the front.

The Dune popcorn bucket showed buckets could sell movies

Before the Dune popcorn bucket reached theaters, it was approved by three companies: the manufacturer, AMC and Legendary Pictures. All three looked at it and thought, "Yep, nothing wrong with that." Once it was released, everyone else saw a sex toy, and the internet lost its mind. Within days it was a viral sensation, even parodied on SNL.

When the cast were asked about it on the promotional tour, Florence Pugh said it was not okay, and Josh Brolin said he'd rather starve than put his hand in it. Zendaya saw the genius in it, pointing out that from a marketing perspective it was kind of brilliant. And she was right.

Up to that point, buckets had been souvenirs theaters sold to make extra money. Dune accidentally stumbled onto something else. Instead of using movies to sell popcorn buckets, they could use popcorn buckets to sell movies. And Warner Bros. wasn't even paying for any of that publicity.

Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool and Wolverine bucket

Hollywood being Hollywood, it didn't take long for someone to do the same thing on purpose. Ryan Reynolds has practically made a second career out of capitalizing on viral moments through his marketing company, Maximum Effort. In 2019, when Peloton got roasted for a Christmas commercial in which a husband bought his wife an exercise bike, Reynolds hired the actress from that ad and put her in a spot for his Aviation Gin, looking like she had escaped a terrible marriage.

When the Dune bucket went viral, he saw another opportunity. With Deadpool and Wolverine coming out a few months later, he got in on the action with a bucket shaped like Wolverine's head, complete with an enormous open mouth you could fill with popcorn. When he unveiled it, Reynolds declared that 2024 would go down as the beginning of the popcorn bucket wars. As ridiculous as that sounds, it's more or less what happened.

Bowser, an IMAX camera and a 90 dollar Godzilla

The designs went off the rails. For the Super Mario Galaxy movie, there's a miniature Bowser cauldron that holds only five to 11 kernels of popcorn. Before you ask what the point is, that is the point: creating something ridiculous that gets people talking. "And the more ridiculous, the better, because that spreads on social media." You may think you're seeing posts complaining about a tiny bucket, but every one of them is advertising that there's a new Super Mario movie in theaters.

For Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, to honor it being the first movie shot entirely on IMAX cameras, they made an IMAX camera, and had Nolan show it off to his DP on social media. For Godzilla Minus Zero, there's a bucket almost 20 inches tall that costs 90 dollars.

Let's be honest, people aren't buying these to eat popcorn out of. They're limited edition memorabilia. Theaters are making a fortune, with AMC expecting to make a hundred million this year alone, and they've figured out that limiting production makes people want them even more. People scramble to get them before they sell out, while others resell them on eBay for hundreds of dollars. Collectors trade them, keep them in their original packaging and display them on shelves, and many probably never see a single kernel.

James Cameron, Tim Burton and James Gunn now weigh in on buckets

Hollywood is taking this seriously enough that filmmakers are getting involved. James Cameron demanded final approval over the bucket for Avatar: Fire and Ash. Tim Burton was involved in developing the shrunken head drink cup for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to make sure it matched the look of his movie. James Gunn had a bucket designer visit him on the set of Man of Tomorrow to discuss ideas for the next Superman film.

These aren't designs dreamed up a few weeks before release. The companies making them often start a year or more in advance, working with studios and theater chains to figure out what can become a collectible. One company says it sometimes comes up with as many as 50 ideas for a single movie before settling on one.

Perhaps the most ridiculous example involves a designer who runs a company called Snap Creative. He was invited to the Universal lot to read the screenplay for an upcoming movie, but first had to surrender his phone and sign a nondisclosure agreement. He was then given the script and 90 minutes to read it alone, taking notes on what might make a good bucket. That's quite a change from a few years ago, when theaters worried the cups wouldn't fit in the cup holders.

Do popcorn buckets help a movie's box office?

Getting millions of people talking about your bucket is one thing. Getting them to buy a ticket is another. Supergirl's sexually suggestive drink cup drew plenty of attention online, but the movie still bombed, and its elaborate Lobo bucket wasn't flying off the shelves either. Masters of the Universe was another box office disappointment despite several collectible buckets, though its Castle Grayskull bucket was a hit.

The opposite happens too. Pixar's Hoppers was a success, but its beaver dam bucket was a dud. So the success of a movie doesn't necessarily translate into the success of its bucket, or vice versa. AMC has reported increased attendance at some theaters when particular buckets are released, but it's difficult to say how many people are buying tickets because of them. No matter how elaborate these things become, they're not going to convince people to see a movie they have no interest in watching.

Popcorn has saved movie theaters before

That doesn't mean buckets aren't helping theaters. Even if the jury's still out on tickets, they're generating over a hundred million dollars in additional revenue, and for a business that's been struggling this much, that's a big deal.

This wouldn't be the first time theaters turned to popcorn to stay in business. During the Great Depression, theaters were struggling to stay open, and many didn't want people bringing popcorn inside because they thought it would make a mess. Eventually they realized they could make a fortune selling something that cost practically nothing to produce, so they started selling it themselves. For some theaters, concessions were the difference between staying open and closing.

Nearly a hundred years later, theaters are struggling again and turning to popcorn once more. Except this time, it's not necessarily the popcorn they're making all this money from. It's the bucket. "And you don't even have to see the movie to buy one."