AMC Never Anticipated The Dune Popcorn Bucket Craze

AMC created a special popcorn bucket for Dune: Part II, and it generated quite a stir online. AMC chief content officer Elizabeth Frank now says the response to the bucket, which was so popular that it inspired a Saturday Night Live skit, surprised her.

"We would have never imagined the Dune thing. We would have never created it knowing it would be celebrated or mocked," Frank told Variety.

Frank went on to say that Saturday Night Live's spoof of the popcorn bucket was "absolutely" a seal of approval for the Dune popcorn bucket. "You couldn't make it happen if you wanted to. It wouldn't be fair to pull our creative talent aside to say, 'We hope it makes SNL," Frank said.

Regarding special-edition popcorn buckets in general, Frank says these kinds of offerings "makes the movies more fun." Frank said it's like getting a t-shirt at a concert.

"There is a lot of creative energy from it. We continue to learn and evolve," Frank said.

Dune director Denis Villeneuve said "holy smokes" when he saw the popcorn bucket, which is made to look like a sandworm. This being the internet, people envisioned all manner of things that one could do with the popcorn bucket, and we can leave it at that. The cast of the movie also responded to the popcorn bucket craze, with Florence Pugh saying, "It's not okay."

Following a successful run in theaters where it earned more than $665 million, Dune: Part II will be available to buy digitally on April 16 before it comes to Blu-ray and DVD on May 14. A streaming date for Max is likely to follow afterwards.