The biggest movie of the year so far is Dune: Part Two, and for good reason: Canadian director Denis Villeneuve crafted an unbelievably gripping and majestic sci-fi epic.
But no conversation about the latest Villeneuve masterpiece would be complete without bringing up the NSFW sandworm popcorn bucket. The tie-in product quickly became a meme and sold out at theatres across North America.
Despite that, though, AMC, the American theatre chain that debuted the bucket, has some regrets. During an interview with Variety, AMC Chief Content Officer Elizabeth Frank was asked about how much AMC plans to lean into popcorn buckets. As part of her answer, Frank noted that the company was taken aback by the response to the Dune bucket.
“We continue to learn and evolve. We would have never imagined the ‘Dune’ thing. We would have never created it knowing it would be celebrated or mocked,” she said.
When Variety pointed out that the bucket getting parodied on Saturday Night Live, Frank added “And you couldn’t make it happen if you wanted to. It wouldn’t be fair to pull our creative talent aside to say, ‘We hope it makes SNL.’”
On the one hand, it makes sense that an executive like Frank would distance herself from such a sexually-charged meme-ified product, but on the other, it was undeniably a success in terms of both sales and generating buzz for the product upon which it’s based.
Hopefully, we’ll get another fun Dune bucket when Villeneuve returns for Dune Messiah.
Image credit: AMC
Source: Variety
