Welcome to Film Marketing 3.0
In a bold move, Christopher Nolan's film The Odyssey opened for ticket sales an entire year before its scheduled release on July 17, 2026. Despite the unprecedented move, there was a frenzy of fan excitement reported in early bookings, from Sydney to Seattle. It's not hard to imagine that they may have raked in billions of dollars in ticket sales even before the first show is screened. A movie that is still under production is being sold like a concert of a long-returning singer. If the sole purpose of movie marketing is selling tickets, then Nolan has surely nailed it.
Movies of this decade have what those in the past never had — an audience of millions of global digital natives who crave excitement, authenticity, and connection. Their short attention spans seek constant dopamine, and any event that can catch their imagination, like The Odyssey's advance ticket sales, is sure to create a box office impact.
If Marketing 1.0 was the use of traditional media to find audiences, 2.0 was the added experiential route with meet-and-greets, and event and media integrations. Post the pandemic, in the age of infinite content and clutter, it's getting tougher to draw the disengaged generation to the theatre. It requires the curation of sharply targeted messages with virality — a new Marketing 3.0 playbook.
As video and voice overtake text and print as the primary forms of content consumption, the daily diet for the time-starved GenZ comprises infinite wake-up scrolls and bedtime reels, making it possible to reach them digitally with a good bait. Creating exciting, shareable content to get the film into conversations is the new key to box office glory.
Movies that use Instagram to create excitement by sharing stunning shoot visuals, Facebook for advertising, YouTube for trailers, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes clips have seen it translate to ticket sales. Here are some breakthrough marketing ideas movies have used to get audiences to the theatres:
The producer of Saiyaara, YRF Films, got some not-so-trained actors to shed elephant tears and act out emotional outbursts after seeing the film. These unfiltered, amateur videos of girls crying in lifts, car parks, and on footpaths after watching the movie spread word on social media like wildfire and created a rush at the ticket office. No hired influencer could have matched the power of #saiyaaracrying, which propelled the movie past the ₹300-crore mark in collections — a first for a movie with newcomers.
In 2012, the makers of the horror film series Paranormal Activity had done something similar — recording jump-scare reactions of terrified audience members using night vision cameras at special previews of the film. That film, made with just $200,000 (₹1.7 crore) grossed over $200 million (₹1,700 crore) at the box office and became a cult classic.
The poster for the film Jawaan raised tremendous curiosity about the new look of SRK, re-positioning him as an action hero. There was no pre-release marketing other than this poster, adding to the suspense. Using the same playbook, YRF didn’t have any pre-release marketing for Saiyaara. No one knew anything about the lead pair, Ahaan Panday and Aneet Panda, so when they first appeared on the screen, they were fresh and exceeded audience expectations.
The horror comedy Munjya put an ugly, unexplained graphic on billboards, fuelling curiosity among fans of the genre. This created so much social virality that it had every teenager wanting to catch the film, eventually helping it cross ₹125 crore in revenue.
Barbie used blank, pink outdoor hoardings with only the release date on it — there was neither the name of the film, nor even an image of the lead, Margot Robbie, or a doll. The thematic colour of the marketing campaign reminded the target group, which had grown up since its Barbie days, that this movie was for them, and the word spread rapidly within and beyond the fan base. Enough for them to flock in with nostalgia, piling up $1.5 billion (₹13,500 crore) in box office collections for this Greta Gerwig wonder.
Aamir Khan’s rugged, bald-headed with a scar look for the movie Ghajini became the hook for the film’s marketing. The promotion focused not on the film’s content but the haircut and scar. Aamir went into salons and gave haircuts to volunteers and theatre staff, creating a virality not heard before and making India’s first ₹100 crore film at the box office.
Marathi film Bai Pan Bhari Deva (Women can be tough too!) not only had a cool title but also intriguing posters of the cast — relatively unknown female actors wearing shiny, bright traditional Nauvari sarees and Ray-Ban aviator glasses. No one knew what the film was about, but the poster and special women-only screenings before release gave it a stupendous start and over ₹100 crore at the Marathi box office — a great return on a shoestring budget.
Gully Boy, a film about street rappers in Mumbai, used grassroots marketing to get to the hip-hop community. A mix of live rap battles and street performances created awareness of this underground music movement and drove a string of new audiences to the box office. The love story with a beat inspired people to begin writing rap as a form of expression and participate in open mike sessions, as the film attained cult status.
The first instalment of the Telugu film Pushpa had stormed the box office with an unprecedented ₹100 crore in collections for its Hindi version, pushing the producers to target the northern market actively when they returned with Pushpa2. Allu Arjun launched the trailer in Patna, at stadiums filled with people eager to watch him in flesh and blood. The Hindi version of the sequel raked in over ₹700 crore at the box office, opening a completely new market for Telugu feature films.
Manjummel Boys, with a dozen young boys and no heroine, pitched the film as a tragic survival story and went on to become the first Malayalam film to collect over 50 per cent of its box office earnings from markets outside Kerala. Mission Impossible is a movie franchise built on a strong reputation for realistic stunts performed by Tom Cruise himself. This commitment to authenticity is an important selling point, and the movie used the photograph and video of him seated atop the spire of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, generating for the film a lot of buzz online and nearly half a billion dollars (₹4,300 crore) at the box office.
The James Bond film Skyfall had Daniel Craig parachuting down with the Queen from a helicopter for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Though they used body doubles for the stunt, the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony was forever shaken, if not stirred. That widely televised marketing gimmick perhaps made Skyfall the only Bond movie to gross a billion dollars (₹8,500 crore) at the box office.
For Barbie, Warner Bros created a TV show called Dreamhouse Challenge on its channel HGTV, where the actual Barbie house from the movie was recreated and audiences would participate and live the Barbie Life. Kattapa ne Bahubali ko kyon maara? (Why did Katappa kill Bahubali?) remains one of Indian cinema’s most iconic questions, driving people to seek the answer by watching the sequel of the wildly popular Telugu film Bahubali. While part 1 clocked nearly ₹650 crore earnings, the sequel raked in a cool ₹2,000 crore. The series captured the nation’s imagination with incredible storytelling and performances.
In a remarkable departure from convention, Warner Bros and Universal Pictures, the producers of the widely different but simultaneously releasing films Barbie (by Greta Gerwig) and Oppenheimer (by Christopher Nolan), respectively, marketed them as a double bill of sorts with the tagline #Barbenheimer. The ploy worked as audiences took the bait and watched both films, which exceeded box-office expectations to gross over $2.5 billion and wing eight Academy awards between them.
Can we imagine War from Yash Raj and Coolie starring Rajinikanth, both of which release on August 15, be jointly promoted as #CoolieWar? Now, that could be a blockbuster marketing hack! (Naveen Chandra runs 91 Film Studios, which produces and distributes regional language feature films)