‘Deadpool’ Goes NSFW With Popcorn Bucket Promo

Brendan Menapace

Between the ubiquity of streaming services and the COVID interruption – not to mention the rising price of admission – movies aren’t making quite as much from the theaters as they used to. While it formerly was the only way to see the newest flicks, now people tend to either watch from home immediately, or just wait until the movies make their way to one of the many streaming services.

Nonetheless, of late, little promo giveaways have been sweetening the in-person experience to attract more theatergoers.

Big-time franchises like “Avengers” and “Dune” have used fun collectible popcorn buckets to get people to the theaters in the hopes of snagging limited edition swag. Some are even selling on resale sites.

The latest “Dune” popcorn bucket, which is modeled after the sandworms of Arrakis (Shai-Hulud for all of our Fremen readers), got some media attention for its sort of … well…questionable design. It became a meme, which gave the movie and the promo product even more attention. If it got people in theater seats though, is that really “bad press?” Probably not – more like a happy accident.

All that sets the stage for the latest example of theater merch enticement: The popcorn bucket promo for the upcoming “Deadpool” movie, which brings Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine into the fold. The popcorn bucket is Wolverine’s face, where you eat popcorn out of his open, very rounded mouth. On the side, in graffiti-like lettering, is “Designed by Deadpool,” insinuating that it was the Merc with the Mouth himself that designed the bucket as a prank at the expense of Logan.

Fans think it’s fun, and the offering accomplishes what a lot of intellectual properties have been doing with their merchandise: creating products that bring the in-movie or in-show universe to the real world. In this case, it’s giving fans a product that was supposedly made by the main character as a prank; that leans into the real-life meme of suggestive popcorn buckets.

Most importantly, the bucket gets people talking about the item and, therefore, the movie. Whether or not they actually eat popcorn out of it is irrelevant, some marketers might say. It’s a conversation piece on the internet, and that’s one of the most valuable forms of marketing a movie could get. Garfield got one, too, as it seems every movie release must have a popcorn bucket the way a band must have T-shirts.

It’s similar, in a way, to the political merchandise that doesn’t even promote the candidate, but instead just attacks rivals. This is a movie character attacking another movie character in the pursuit of viral marketing. Pretty meta.

From a promo perspective, the popcorn bucket marketing experiment shows how one can push the boundaries a little bit and create something that goes beyond the normal parameters. You have to toe that line carefully, though, as it’s easy to veer too far from something that’s funny to something that’s just in poor taste and offensive.

Fans will be interested to see if Wolverine has any rebuttal in the form of a promo product as the film’s release nears. More is already being teased. It would seem that these days, movie promotional products get teasers, just like the movies themselves.

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