Scary Movie Went All In On Marketing To Stoners. A Vape, A Bong Popcorn Bucket, The Whole Thing.
The Wayans brothers’ new Scary Movie is leaning all the way in which into weed tradition. There’s an official PAX vaporizer collab, a stoner parody sequence, a bong within the trailer, and a popcorn bucket formed like a water pipe that the studio posted however no person can affirm is definitely on the market.
The Wayans are again, and so is Ghostface, and this time the entire thing is coated in resin. The new Scary Moviein theaters June 5, is reuniting the unique Core Four (Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris and Regina Hall) for the primary time since 2001, and Paramount’s advertising workforce has determined the way in which to promote a horror parody in 2026 is to goal it squarely at individuals who get excessive.
They’re not being refined about it. The trailer contains a bong and a jar of weed. There’s an official hashish {hardware} collaboration. And there is a piece of theater merch the studio posted that will or might not ever attain a concession stand, which is someway probably the most on-brand factor about the whole marketing campaign.
The PAX collab is actual
The confirmed centerpiece is a team-up between PAX and Paramount Pictures: a limited-edition Scary Movie PAX Four, the identical {hardware} because the model’s flagship vaporizer, wearing an onyx colorway with Scary Movie-inspired paintings and co-branded packaging. It’s a collectible aimed, in PAX’s personal phrases, at “those who get elevated,” accessible whereas provides final on pax.com.
PAX can also be producing a four-part parody sequence known as “Don’t Kill, Just Chill,” written by and starring comic Justine Marino, that follows Ghostface and pals by means of what the model describes as “absurdly chill scenarios” impressed by the franchise. A masked slasher who’d relatively pack a bowl than chase a sufferer is a stable bit, and it is precisely the lane this film is driving in.
For PAX, the logic tracks. It’s a virtually two-decade-old {hardware} model that markets itself on design and discretion, and a horror-comedy reboot constructed for a stoned Friday-night viewers is about as clear a cultural match as hashish manufacturers get in a enterprise the place most film tie-ins are off-limits.
The bong popcorn bucket is a stupendous query mark
Then there’s the popcorn bucket. The official Scary Movie Instagram account posted photographs of a concession vessel formed, unmistakably, like a glass water pipe: a globe-bottomed chamber filled with popcorn, an extended vertical tube, a aspect stem, smoke billowing round it for impact, the Scary Movie brand on the aspect. A follow-up picture confirmed 4 sizes lined up underneath the tagline “Choose the piece that fits you just right.”
The reveal is actual. The studio posted it. What no person can say for positive is whether or not the factor is an precise product headed to concession stands or an elaborate gag that lives solely as a advertising reel. Ace Fantasy Land Newswhich tracks theater collectibles obsessively, put it, they do not know if it is an actual product and so they do not suppose it’s. And that uncertainty is the joke working precisely as designed.
This is a franchise that spent 5 movies committing to each bit with zero restraint. A bong-shaped popcorn bucket is exactly the sort of factor the Scary Movie workforce would put up as a completely produced promotional reel that is additionally totally a gag. It’s additionally exactly the sort of factor they’d really manufacture and promote. With this sequence, each are equally plausible, and the studio is aware of it. The ambiguity is the advertising.
It additionally lands in a second the place elaborate popcorn buckets have grow to be their very own arms race. Scream 7 has Ghostface busts and door-bursting collectibles at Cinemark and AMC. The Devil Wears Prada 2 has a handbag-shaped bucket. A bong bucket would simply be the style lastly saying the quiet half out loud.
Why this issues past the gag
Strip away the jokes and there is a actual sign right here. A main studio is comfy constructing a whole promotional marketing campaign round hashish, brazenly, with an official {hardware} accomplice, in a approach that will have been unthinkable for a mainstream theatrical launch a decade in the past. Weed within the trailer. A vape on the merch desk. A stoner-coded slasher sequence on the model’s channels. None of it’s profitable from the shadows. It’s the entire pitch.
Whether the bong bucket ever exhibits up at a concession stand nearly does not matter. The marketing campaign already informed you all the pieces about the place hashish sits in mainstream tradition in 2026: comfy sufficient to headline a Paramount advertising push, and humorous sufficient {that a} masked killer packing a vape reads as a punchline as a substitute of a scandal.
Scary Movie hits theaters June 5.
