It cannot be denied: Super Bowl generally translates into big box office.
However, there are only three motion picture studios —Disney, Paramount and Universal— who are willing to pony up $7.5M-$8M for a 30-second spot on Fox before an audience, which last year reached 123.7 millions viewers across live linear and streaming.
For those in the dark, the Feb. 9 big game is a rematch of the 2023 face-off between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, the latter eyeing their unprecedented third straight Super Bowl title.
Say what you will about linear being dead, but when it comes to live sports programming, it’s still a prime means of reaching a moviegoing audience. Read, such big pics like Deadpool & Wolverine ($211.4M opening) and Wicked ($112.5M) launched during last year’s Super Bowl.
This year, count on the following to air either pre, during or post-game:
The No. 1 studio of last year with more than $2.2 billion domestic, Disney, has always had a presence at the Super Bowl. It won’t be a surprise if they show off wares for their upcoming pics Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stich (May 23), and Pixar’s Elio (June 13). We understand they’ll only be showing off two out of three of their upcoming Marvel Studios movies which include the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World (Feb. 14), summer-kick off Thunderbolts* (May 2) and Fantastic Four: The First Steps (July 25). That said, the studio has always launched the first look of a big summer movie historically, in the past such titles being Deadpool & Wolverine, and Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Universal, the No. 2 studio with $1.88B domestic in 2024, will be wowing with trailers of Dean DeBlois’ live-action take of his animated classic How to Train Your Dragon (June 13), and the Scarlett Johansson-Mahershala Ali-Jonathan Bailey starring, Gareth Edwards directed Jurassic World Rebirth (July 2). Don’t be surprised if you catch a Blumhouse title, i.e. M3GAN 2.0 (June 27). You’ll remember how Uni previously stunted the first installment with dancing M3GAN dolls on talks shows and popular landmarks like the Empire State building.
Paramount is no stranger to the Super Bowl, even when their sister CBS network and Paramount+ isn’t broadcasting it. This year, the buzz is that spots will air spots for the Jack Quaid comedy thriller Novacaine (March 14), the Smurfs animated musical movie starring Rihanna (July 18) and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. Mission movies dropped Super Bowl spots respectively in 2018 and 2023 for Mission: Impossible – Fallout and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. As far if there’s a bigger stunt related to the film, Cruise let’s to keep those surprises under his belt.
Sitting out are Sony, Warner Bros, Netflix, Amazon MGM Studios and Lionsgate. It’s not expected that Apple Studios will have anything either. The last time Warners made a big play during the Super Bowl was for 2023’s The Flash. James Gunn’s Superman won’t have a new spot during the Big Game, they already aired trailers during the AFC and NFC games.
Per RelishMix, the five most watched Super Bowl trailers on social media in the 24 hours post game were Deadpool & Wolverine (75.4M views $211.4M opening), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (43.2M views, $58.4M opening), Wicked (40.1M views, $112.5M opening), Twisters (29.2M views, $81.2M) and Despicable Me 4 (27.9M views, $75M 3-day/$122.6M 5-day opening).