It’s been a blockbuster year for the movie business.

“This year is on track to be the biggest box office since 2019, which is so exciting and great,” says Lauren McChesney, co-owner of Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theatre in Orefield, PA, the oldest operating drive-in theater in the U.S. “We’ve definitely seen that with people getting very excited about the movies and coming out to see them.”

From big-budget epics like The Odyssey to nostalgia-tinged sequels like Devil Wears Prada 2 to surprise indie hits like Obsession, 2026 has been rife with films that moviegoers are eager to catch on the big screen, rather than wait for them to trickle onto streaming services.

And intertwined with that appetite for entertainment is a hunger for keepsakes, mementos and other tangible expressions of fandom – which has been good news for merch makers of all stripes. In recent years, “there’s really been huge growth in our business,” says Rod Mason, vice president of business development at Zinc Group, an Australian company that makes collectible 3D popcorn buckets and other movie merchandise.

This popcorn bucket, created by Zinc Group for Dune: Part Two, became a viral sensation on social media.

Zinc Group first made a splash with an R2-D2-shaped popcorn bucket it created for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. COVID slammed the brakes on the business, but after a sandworm-shaped bucket for Dune: Part Two went viral (though perhaps for the wrong reasons) in 2024, it was full steam ahead for creatively designed popcorn delivery systems. Prior to the pandemic, Mason says, theater chains would buy specialty buckets for perhaps three or four big-budget movies a year. Now, clients like AMC are doing buckets for 40 or 45 films. “It’s really increased significantly,” Mason adds.

Traditional promo distributors, too, are noticing a rebound in entertainment clients after the lean pandemic years. “Movies are coming back,” says Jeanie Chung, president of Chung Marketing (asi/162114) in South Pasadena, CA, who started her career working in distribution at DreamWorks and has partnered with a variety of movie studios and other entertainment clients since entering the promotional products industry over a decade ago. “Studios are getting smarter about how they buy promo, ordering items people want to use and keep, rather than cheap items that will be thrown out.”

Cinema’s Rollercoaster Ride

Still, working with entertainment clients is not always easy. “It can be quite inconsistent,” says Ari Silberman, owner of Los Angeles-based distributorship Coolhand Promotions. “It’s feast or famine.”

The movie business has gone through a lot of upheaval in recent years, with pandemic-fueled shutdowns segueing directly into the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023, which further paused production.

The rise of streaming has also put a damper on movie-theater runs. In 2025, an AP poll found that 32% of U.S. adults had watched a recently released movie on streaming rather than going to a theater at least once a month. And only 16% of adults had watched a movie in a theater at least once a month.

$7 Billion
Total U.S. box office in 2026 through August – a 20% increase over the same period last year and 7% lower than the same timeframe in 2019.(Rentrak)

Even this year, with box office revenue poised to reach pre-pandemic levels, there are some caveats: Fewer theaters exist and fewer movies are being made; plus, theatrical windows have been shrinking from the traditional 90-day window to about 45 days or even shorter.

Mason isn’t worried, however. “Cinema’s been dying for the last 80 years,” he says. “First, it was TV, then it was VCRs, then DVDs, then it was streaming and all the rest of it, but they always seem to find a way to come back.”

He attributes the theater-going renaissance this summer, in part, to the rise of collectible buckets and other merch, but also to the increase in high-quality movies and the Gen Z-led trend of craving in-person experiences. “There’s a changing mentality,” he adds. “They want to get away from their phones.”

Changing Movie Promos

The way promo products support the movie business has shifted in the last decade or two. It used to be that studios’ marketing teams would place order sizes with five or even six zeros at the end. “Those were amazing times,” Chung says. “Quantities were anywhere from 30,000 to a million.”

These days, a large order from an entertainment client is more likely to be in the 5,000-piece range and often much smaller, she adds. Marketers would rather create FOMO moments with limited runs of mid- to higher-end items on a first-come, first-served basis, Chung says, than blanket moviegoing audiences with low-price products.

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Chung Marketing created a promo campaign, including T-shirts, totes and an eyeball-shaped stress ball, for the horror film Corporate Retreat to give out at CinemaCon.

That tracks with what Terri Yamate, president of Pasadena, CA-based Beyond Zebra (asi/138945), has seen. Yamate previously worked in the Walt Disney Co.’s internal promotional products department, but branched out on her own after Disney shut down that division. Disney was Beyond Zebra’s first client, and other entertainment clients followed.

“We used to do gigantic premiums, and they were pretty basic items – hats, apparel, posters,” Yamate recalls. “They were pretty standard.”

As social media grew in importance, marketing dollars shifted to digital advertising, especially influencer marketing, during the pandemic era. “We would curate these kits that were really more specific to the movie coming out,” she says. “We started getting deeper into the weeds as far as being more creative. It was a lot more fun.”

Chung Marketing (asi/162114) created this custom umbrella with a step-and-repeat interior for Paramount.

The next big shift in movie marketing is leaning toward immersive experiences and activations that rely heavily on custom print and promo.

“I’m seeing a lot of pop-up stores where I do the swag,” Chung says. “They want people interacting with it [and posting]. Instagram is such a big deal.”

Consider the rollout of The Devil Wears Prada 2. In the spring, Disney had giant red shoes with pitchfork heels installed in several cities, according to Event Marketer.

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The Devil Wears Prada 2’s marketing team created a real version of the fictional Runway magazine to give out at pop-up newsstands in select cities.

The company’s marketing team also designed, printed and released a real 90-plus-page issue of the fictional Runway magazine with actress Emily Blunt on the cover, distributing copies at pop-up newsstands. Once the movie opened, branded kiosks at select movie theaters encouraged fans to choose a “fashion emergency” from a touchscreen to receive makeup, hairspray, a claw clip or a copy of the fake magazine.

“It was so believable,” says McChesney of Shankweiler’s Theatre, who received one of the magazines. “It was a great way to advertise the movie, but still collectible too.”

Interactivity and personalization are key in lower-budget releases as well. Movie promos might involve create-your-own bag charms for films aimed toward a younger audience, or it could be a lunch tin paired with a set of custom decals that kids can apply with their own flair, Yamate says.

‘Everything’s Due Yesterday’

Some of the biggest challenges when working with entertainment industry clients are timing and the lack of available information for an unreleased film. “Everything’s due yesterday,” Chung says. “The timelines are so tight.”

Silberman recalls often having only about two weeks to turn around a project for a movie studio. “It was very hard to really flex your creative muscles,” he says.

Still, sometimes the stars aligned to allow for fun projects that studios approved and fans loved. For the 2020 horror film The Invisible Man, Coolhand Promotions created empty packaging for an “invisible man action figure.” As Silberman recalls, “People went crazy for it.”

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In showbiz, many factors are in flux – from the projected release date to the title itself – as well as how early (or late) a promo distributor is brought into the moviemaking process, which affects how much information is available. Oftentimes, Yamate says, Beyond Zebra would receive very few details from studio clients before working on a project – perhaps just a “one sheet” and a logo for the film. “We have to do a lot of research on our end,” she says. “We’ll go online and start looking for trailers and try to find out who the stars are.”

Once her team gets a feel for the movie, they’re able to iterate. For instance, on a project for Loki, a TV show tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Beyond Zebra was asked to create a promo item of some kind, with little direction beyond the initial request. They decided to create a note cube that resembled the Tesseract, the “cosmic cube” featured in several of the popular Avengers films. The studio wasn’t able to provide art for the project, but Beyond Zebra scoured the already released films for screengrabs from as many angles as possible in order to recreate the distinctive prop as a functional promo item. “We presented the Tesseract note cube to the studio, and they loved it,” Yamate says.

Even more complicated than being creative on a deadline, she adds, is taking care of compliance issues on the same truncated timelines. “We have to move very, very quickly so we can get all of the product-safety documents lined up to provide to their legal department for approvals before we can get started,” Yamate says.

Zinc Group and other novelty popcorn-bucket makers often work on longer project calendars. Ideally, the Zinc Group team would have 12 to 15 months to design a popcorn vessel for a movie, says Marcus Gonzalez, global creative director. Sometimes, though, they only have a quarter of that time to work their magic. That was the case for the 2025 film F1, where Zinc Group had about four months to design popcorn buckets that resembled F1 driver helmets. Constant communication and immediate feedback from the client helped make that project a success, Gonzalez adds.

Though it seems that collectible popcorn buckets are everywhere these days, it’s taken merch makers a lot of time and effort to convince theaters they’re worth the investment.

“One of the things the exhibitors readily admit is that they’re not early adopting,” Mason says.

That’s certainly been the case for Shankweiler’s Drive-In. “As a small theater with limited room, we have to put a little more thought behind merch than a multiplex does,” McChesney says. “A lot of products are under embargo, so we don’t even know what they look like. We just have to decide and hope it’s cool. It’s a huge gamble.”

After initially dismissing the idea of merch, Shankweiler’s began dabbling last year, stocking up on specialty popcorn buckets for Wicked: For Good and the 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those sold out briskly, but a 3D collectible bucket for the latest SpongeBob SquarePants movie was a slower mover for the drive-in.

Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theatre in Orefield, PA, has started selling branded fidget clickers created by Prism3D Creations at its snack bar.

The theater has ramped up merch efforts this year, purchasing collectible popcorn buckets for a wider variety of titles, but also working with a local screen printer and other artisans on T-shirts and 3D-printed fidget clickers bearing the Shankweiler’s logo. Says McChesney, “It’s sort of just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”