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Earlier this year, the folks who operate AMC movie theaters caused a bit of a stir thanks to the limited-edition popcorn buckets that were designed to roll out in conjunction with Dune: Part Two, and if you were able to get your hands on one, you might be sitting on a goldmine.
Movie theaters need all the help they can get when it comes to drawing in paying customers in the wake of the pandemic, and AMC has done what it can to drum up publicity with the help of the custom popcorn buckets it’s commissioned for movies including Barbie (fashioned in the shape of a pink convertible), Scream (the iconic Ghostface mask), and Wonka (the confectioner’s top hat).
However, none of those managed to come close to drumming up as much attention as the one created for another Timothée Chalamet vehicle: Dune: Part Two.
At the end of January, we got our first look at the popcorn bucket inspired by the sandworms the Fremen refer to as “Shai-Hulud,” which quickly went viral courtesy of people who couldn’t help but have a laughably juvenile reaction to what I saw at least one person describe as the “forbidden hole.”
AMC also had some fun with the reception to the popcorn buckets, and the chain quickly saw its supply exhausted when Dune: Part Two hit theaters at the start of March.
With that said, there’s still hope for anyone who’s trying to fill a suggestively-shaped sandworm-shaped hole in their life courtesy of eBay, but it’s probably not going to be cheap.
Someone spent close to $850 on one of the popcorn buckets at the start of March, and while that appears to be an outlier, there are more than a dozen auctions that have surpassed the triple-digit mark (although a handful of them were packaged with extra items).
What a world.