AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE:AMC) Inc is playing to its contemporary crowd with a new Spiderman NFT ‘drop’ to coincide with the upcoming release of the Sony (NYSE:SNE)/Marvel movie Spider-Man: No Way Home in December.
Demand for tickets and NFTs saw the midnight box-office opening crash the AMC website, whilst other ticket sites like Fandango also went down.
The cinema chain’s marketing drive has tapped into a hype triumvirate of meme-stocks, crypto, and Marvel Comics.
“Our AMC Theatres guests and our AMC Entertainment shareholders have been calling for AMC to get into the world of NFTs, and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect way to start doing so than with our good friends at Sony (NYSE:SNE) Pictures,” said AMC chief executive Adam Aron.
“This is especially the case in that SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME is one of if not the most anticipated movie of 2021.”
It is the latest piece of crypto associated marketing by the American cinema operator which saw its shareholder base transformed amid 2021’s ‘meme-stock’ craze, driven by investor forums on Reddit (such as the infamous r/wallstreetbets community).
The army of retail investors from the internet effectively got AMC clear of chapter 11 bankruptcy, though much of the motivation for buy orders came speculatively, in the ‘meme’ phenomena that gripped a number of high profile and controversial stocks earlier this year.
Keeping the large retail base – which is stereotypically younger and ‘internet native’ – has been an important priority for AMC which has acted creatively to protect its well-supported market valuation, whilst navigating continuing uncertainties of the Covid pandemic and the gradual resuscitation of the cinema industry.
AMC began accepting cryptocurrency as payment from cinema-goers earlier in November, first taking Bitcoin before expanding the facility more recently to take Ethereum and a number of other cryptocurrency tokens.
A separate, and notably lower tech scheme meanwhile sees AMC push its brand into supermarkets and home-delivery market with the launch of a line of popcorn products. It was described by chief executive Adam Aron as a ‘natural and logical’ business move.
The Spiderman NFT campaign meanwhile appears a sharp marketing drive for recurring revenue membership sign-ups and ticket pre-orders for what’s expected to be the top grossing movie not just for the holidays but for the whole of 2021.
AMC says that some 86,000 NFTs will be made available to its pay per year and pay per month members, along with shareholders in the company’s ‘Investor Connect’ rewards programme, who buy tickets to see the Spider-man: No Way Home when it opens exclusively a day early at AMC, on December 16.
The cinema firm began selling tickets for the Spider-man movie after midnight and said it expected the tickets with NFTs will sell out quickly.