The bizarro world of epic popcorn buckets didn’t begin with Dune: Part Two’s wonderful worm monstrosity, but it certainly propelled the concept into the mainstream. It even merited one of SNL’s best sketches of the year. And if anything, it’s caused every other studio and movie theater chain to raise their game in this most peculiar phenomenon. Now, following Deadpool & Wolverine’s appropriately immature entry, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has entered the fray.
Dune’s bucket was so impactful for two reasons. Firstly, it was one of the fiction’s amazing sandworms, and secondly, because everyone apparently wanted to fuck it. Now, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Regal Movies are thankfully avoiding the latter (well, you do you), but no one can take away its right to market its very own iconic sandworm.
In Tim Burton’s original 1988 Beetlejuice, sandworms existed in—well—Sandwormland, a desert below the Neitherworld. It’s good to know they’ll be making a reappearance in the 2024 sequel, perfectly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, when it releases September 6.
While it’s arguable that things aren’t all going brilliantly in the U.S. just now, from an outsider’s perspective, let me tell you that your popcorn buckets make up for a lot. Over in the UK, we have flimsy, generic cardboard containers that cost £35,000 for a thimble-size, and we’re lucky for it. (However, we do win a bit, because unlike the weird, flavorless buttery nonsense you accept, we have sweetened or salted options, best mixed together.) What I’d give to be able to pick up some glorious tat like this.
And while Regal couldn’t match AMC for its puerile Deadpool & Wolverine bucket, it instead took to Instagram for a whole other version of childish, with a baby Deadpool sat sulking in a cinema seat.
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