First, Bill Howard surrendered his cellphone. Then he signed the nondisclosure agreement. He sat for an hour and a half that day on the Universal Pictures studio lot with a single paper copy of a script for an upcoming movie. He pored over it, alone, scribbling in the one notepad he was permitted, thinking about his craft. How would he bring his unique set of skills to bear on this particular project and help to make it a blockbuster?
Many a Hollywood elite has entered a sealed room to read a top-secret script. But Mr. Howard is not an A-list actor. He’s not a cinematographer or a CGI artist. What Mr. Howard makes is buckets.
Popcorn buckets — or, as they are more formally known, collectible concession vessels. These special-edition snack receptacles are designed for major movies and can sell for as much as $70. All the studios and theater chains want in on them, because for somewhat inexplicable reasons, they have become astonishingly lucrative. AMC Theatres estimates that this year, buckets will generate $100 million in revenue, nearly double the level of 2023. Cinemark Theatres, the country’s third-largest chain, says bucket sales helped its merchandise revenue increase 40 percent from 2024 to 2025.
“Seven years ago, this business effectively didn’t exist for AMC,” said Nels Storm, the company’s vice president of food and beverage product strategy. “I would never suggest that popcorn buckets are the reason people go to the movies, or that movie-themed merch is saving the industry, but over the last few years they’ve become a big part of the conversation around major releases.”
Mr. Howard, 71, is the chief executive at Snap Creative, which is based in Camarillo, Calif., and employs 55 people. Snap is behind two of this summer’s hottest buckets. Both are tied to the release of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”: One is a replica of the director’s IMAX camera, priced at $50, and the other is a 22-inch rendering of the Trojan horse, which sells for $70.
To make them, Mr. Howard and his team met early on with one of the film’s producers, Emma Thomas, to get a walk-through of the story beats. Then they approached IMAX with their ideas.
Rich Gelfond, the theater chain’s chief executive, was skeptical about the camera-concept bucket “I know a lot about the movie business, and I didn’t really know much about the bucket business,” he said. “It was beyond me to really envision that there’d be a strong demand for $50 popcorn buckets.”
He approved a first run of 2,500 units. They sold out almost immediately. Movie fans don’t buy buckets just in theaters — often, they order them in advance and receive them in the mail, without any popcorn inside.
To get more buckets, Mr. Gelfond called up the chief executive of IMAX China and begged him to ship over all his buckets, since the film wouldn’t open there until August. His counterpart agreed, and when IMAX made the second run of 2,500 buckets available, they sold out in seven minutes. Between its website and purchases at theaters, IMAX thinks it sold some 30,000 buckets.
Mr. Gelfond considers himself a convert. “This is a real business,” he said, describing IMAX as “all in” on buckets.
Nearly all of Hollywood’s buckets are made by three companies. In addition to Snap, there are Golden Link, which is based in New York and is the bucket partner of Disney Studios, and Zinc, an Australian firm that has bucketed the “Dune” and “Mission: Impossible” franchises.
Snap, Golden Link and Zinc license the intellectual property of the films from studios and collaborate with them on the designs. Snap’s creative director was recently in Atlanta on the set of the next “Superman” installment and spoke directly to the director, James Gunn, about bucket concepts.
“When you get it right with the filmmaker, you know you are on your way,” Mr. Howard said.
Movie theaters have long sold special popcorn containers, but the industry consensus is that the current craze has two specific inflection points. One came in 2019 when a bucket commissioned for Disney’s “The Rise of Skywalker” — a 17-inch replica of R2-D2 — sold surprisingly well.
The second accelerant involved, and there’s really no other way to put this, the distressingly sexual features of a bucket for “Dune: Part Two” in 2024. Modeled on the gaping maw of an alien sandworm, the design inspired a sketch on “Saturday Night Live” about amorous teenagers and took the bucket market to previously unimaginable heights. Ryan Reynolds, who starred in and produced the “Deadpool” movies, later tried to up the filth factor with a bucket based suggestively on his character’s rival, Wolverine.
Mr. Howard credits Gen Z with turning buckets into a phenomenon. “They are really into buckets,” he said. “They’re looking for experiences that are of the moment, are memeable and are exciting, limited-drop events.”
But there is evidence that bucket fever transcends youth. In May, a red, handbag-shaped bucket for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” sold out over that film’s opening weekend, with many going to older women who were fans of the 20-year-old original movie.
The interest left exhibitors lamenting that they hadn’t ordered more. Demand was “unbelievable,” said David Haywood, Cinemark’s senior vice president of food and beverage strategy. “If I could do that one over again, I don’t even know if there’s a max I would buy.”
Ordering too few buckets creates a powerful sense of scarcity. But sometimes buckets don’t sell. The recent “Supergirl” was a dud, and so was its bucket, which featured the heroine’s reluctant sidekick, Lobo, riding a Spacehog motorcycle. (Perhaps they should have made a bucket that featured the film’s main character.)
Outcomes in the bucket realm can be inscrutable. “Masters of the Universe” was a box-office disappointment last month, as was one of its buckets, a light-up throne belonging to the supervillain Skeletor. Yet a second bucket, featuring Castle Grayskull, was a hit. (It featured both a detachable drink tumbler and a candy compartment.) And popular films can have buckets that bomb, as in the case of “Hoppers,” from Disney’s Pixar, and a vessel shaped like a beaver dam.
Bad buckets create headaches for exhibitors. “Then we have an inventory issue for local theaters,” said Vikki Neil, the head of marketing for Regal Cinemas. “What do we do with that merchandise? Do we ship it back? Do we sell it at a discount? It starts to get complicated.”
But mostly the buckets overfloweth. Regal said its merchandise sales would surpass $40 million this year. And buckets themselves are only getting bigger. At the end of August, for the rerelease of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” Mr. Howard’s company will unveil its largest bucket ever, a four-foot replica of Harry’s Nimbus 2000 broom. It will sell for $50 and, somehow, store 135 ounces of popcorn.
That is 270 percent the capacity of the “Odyssey” horse, which holds 50 ounces in its belly. (“Pretty average for a bucket,” Mr. Howard said.) It should be noted that a conventional paper bucket, size large, contains 170 ounces of popcorn by volume, or a little more than 21 cups.
That is often immaterial to bucket enthusiasts, who sometimes have no interest in popcorn. Recently, on eBay, a batch of 20 buckets celebrating “The Accountant 2” — about a skilled assassin who is also an autism-spectrum C.P.A. — sold for $550.
Bucket makers are still obliged to ensure that their collectible concession vessels work. “It’s important that these function as buckets,” Mr. Howard said. “We don’t want butter leaking out of them, and we want people to be able to clean out the kernels. Your hand has to be able to go in and get the popcorn.”
