Just three film commercials ran in yesterday’s Super Bowl, which is U.S. TV’s most expensive advertisement, though Hollywood celebrities and brands were omnipresent. Those pricey in-game spots were for “Thunderbolts,” “How to Train Your Dragon” (screen grab above) and “M3gan: 2.0,” out of about 60 total spots.
The usual range is four to 10 in-game movie commercials, which this year cost $6 million-$8 million. In what has been a growing trend over the past decade, video streaming commercials that include movie elements are a growing category in-game. Among them are Disney+, Tubi and YouTube TV. So, pure movie commercials are down, but the collateral category of streamers fills in.
Movies are scarce in this year’s professional football championship game because production disruptions from labor strikes and lingering impact of the Covid pandemic.
In the less-expensive pregame in this year’s Super Bowl, four pure-film commercials ran: Paramount’s “Novocaine” hitting theaters March 12; Paramount again for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” for May 23, Universal Pictures “Jurassic World Rebirth” coming July 2; and Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake due May 23. So, this “shoulder” time slot is a growth category for pure movie ads; usually, there are just two or three pure movie ads in pre-, half-time and post-game slots.
The Super Bowl garners TV’s biggest U.S. audience with 126 million viewers (Philadelphia beat Kansas City 40-22 in a one-sided game). Advertisers usually create special commercials for in-game telecast, which get additional viewing online. Last year in 2024 when the pandemic hangover was stronger, there were three pure movie ads that is the same as the three in this cycle. But 2023, the movie count was a more-normal seven in-game.
As for celebrities and Hollywood brands this cycle, they seemed embedded in half the commercials for non-entertainment products and services. These included Matthew McConaughey (Uber Eats and artificial intelligence for Agentforce, joined by Woody Harrelson in the latter), Ben Affleck (repeating for Dunkin Donuts), Harrison Ford (Jeep) and Tom Cruise (for branding football). Re-creating a famous scene from a movie, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan re-enacted the fake orgasm comedy moment in a delicatessen setting for Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
In messaging, advertisers seemed to play it safe with funny and warm content overall, and did not engage the hot-button issues that roil society these days.
Regarding those three in-game movie commercials: “Thunderbolts” Is a live-action comic-book adaptation from Walt Disney Studios that is yet-to-be-rated for May 2 theatrical release domestically. Next is for the new animated “How to Train Your Dragon” from Universal Pictures that is PG rated for June 13 cinema premiere (with the same name as a 2010 release). The final in-game film commercial is for “M3gan: 2.0,” which is a horror sequel from Universal Pictures set for June 27 premiere and is currently unrated. For some reason, “Megan: 2.0” did not appear on some post-Super Bowl lists of commercials.
Ordinarily, the corporate sibling movie studio of the host broadcaster, in this case Fox Broadcasting, would buy movie ads, if for no other reason to reduce inventory in what would overall raise unit pricing. But the Fox media conglomerate sold its 20th Century Fox major-movie studio (“Avatar” and “Star Wars” films) to Disney in 2019 for $71 billion, so the broadcaster has no movie-studio sibling.
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