New data shows opening weekend matters less as TikTok buzz drives long-term box office. Studios and theaters are leaning into the trend as the industry rebounds from pandemic losses, strikes and streaming pressure.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A big opening weekend has long been key to a movie's box office success. Or you can have BJ Leiderman do your theme music, as he does for our show. Now fan-made TikToks are helping audiences discover and keep films popular well beyond their debuts. The studios and theaters are actively pushing for more, as NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports.

MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: This week at CinemaCon, the annual convention for movie theater owners, director Denis Villeneuve showed the first seven minutes of his upcoming film "Dune 3." He told the crowd he made this third installment for the fans. And long before the December opening, fans like Matt Ramos (ph) have been posting their own reactions on TikTok.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MATT RAMOS: Dude, Hans' score is going crazy.

CAMERON CURTIS: There's this incredible chant in "Dune 3." It's in the trailer, and what we've seen is it's a soundbite that users on TikTok have embraced and made their own content with.

DEL BARCO: Cameron Curtis is executive vice president of global digital marketing for Warner Bros.

CURTIS: We often see that the creator content on platform outperforms our traditional advertising content by 3 to 1. It's become just critical to our strategy and everything that we do.

DEL BARCO: Curtis says Warner Bros. and other studios have been partnering with TikTok creators to market their films. This week during CinemaCon, TikTok released a report with Cinema United, the association of movie theater owners.

DENNIS PAPIROWSKI: We really saw that the buzz doesn't stop with the opening weekend.

DEL BARCO: Dennis Papirowski, TikTok's global head of entertainment and news, says every day the platform's users create 6 1/2 million TikToks related to content from new and classic films and TV shows. Half of their users say they discovered a new movie through the platform, and of those, more than a third looked up showtimes and purchased a movie ticket. Dawn Yang is the company's global head of entertainment partnerships.

DAWN YANG: Unlike studios - they usually tend to do a lot of marketing towards the first weekend. But on TikTok, it really takes off after the first weekend because people have seen the entire movie, and they want to talk about it.

DEL BARCO: TikTokkers post enthusiastic movie reviews. They cosplay and reenact scenes, and some create new edits from the official trailers and footage. For instance, 24-year-old college student Josiah Pilet (ph) remixed "Spider Man" clips set to music.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) You don't know Spider Man?

THE CLASH: (Singing) Should I stay or should I go?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Go, Spidey, go.

DEL BARCO: Fan Edits would have been no-nos in the old Hollywood strategy of protecting IP, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, which analyzes the box office.

PAUL DERGARABEDIAN: There was a time when studios did not want marketing messaging going out that wasn't from them. Look, if it's positive - even things that are negative, as long as it's not something, like, horrible, that can boost the profile of a movie and excitement around it, 'cause sometimes people want to see what the fuss is all about.

DEL BARCO: Dergarabedian says studios are increasingly embracing and harnessing the power of short TikToks made by the key Gen Z audience.

DERGARABEDIAN: You have some movies that have a huge opening weekend then drop by 70% or more in their second weekend. But the way you keep people coming back is that not only you have a great movie, but the social media engagement continues, amplifies and creates that excitement and the FOMO factor among potential moviegoers.

DEL BARCO: Take the film "Sinners." Cinema United and TikTok's report found that buzz on the platform around the film surged after its opening weekend, and ticket sales barely dipped the next week. But social media platforms, including TikTok, have also sometimes created minor headaches for theaters. Last year, a fan-made post chronicled the mayhem sparked when Jack Black's character said this line in the "Minecraft Movie."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JACK BLACK: (As Steve) Chicken jockey.

(YELLING)

DEL BARCO: Moviegoers yelled chicken jockey and caused a ruckus, throwing popcorn everywhere. A TikTokker who goes by the name joshclawson0 posted this video that includes someone bringing a live chicken to a theater.

During CinemaCon, Warner Bros. executives offered a good-natured apology to theater owners for the mess. But it's not just fans posting TikToks. Check out this parody of a theatergoer dressed up to watch "Lee Cronin's The Mummy."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) OK, Here's your tickets to "The Mummy." Anything else I can do for you today?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character in creepy voice) Like how your little piggies taste.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Can I get security to my register, please?

DEL BARCO: As executive director of communications and content for B&B Theatres, Paul Farnsworth makes funny TikToks. They star himself and the staff, often in the lobby, playing around with the latest movies.

PAUL FARNSWORTH: It's like a little wink-wink joke. Nothing that you're going to, like, pay money to go see a stand-up comedian say. But I think for us, it indicates to our guests a sensibility of, like, the playfulness of the movies, the magic of the experience, the shared communal thing that we're all trying to achieve with them.

DEL BARCO: Farnsworth says he asked the studios for guidance on the material, hoping his viral TikToks get people into movie theaters.

Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.

Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.