The Popcorn Bucket Wars: Theaters’ Hottest Collectible Keeps Turning Into a Dirty Joke

AMC’s new “Dune: Part Three” bucket has two sandworm mouths, and a Canadian version vibrates. Novelty buckets have become a $100 million business for theaters, and the ones that sell out fastest tend to be the ones the internet can’t stop snickering at.

By Rich Vandall · Oct. 30, 2026

The sandworm has a partner now.

The popcorn bucket AMC Theatres will sell for Dune: Part Three, revealed Oct. 29 on the film’s social media channels, has two of the creature’s round, tooth-ringed mouths rising from its lid. ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer summed it up in three words: “His and hers sandworms!” AMC also has an exclusive drink cup topped with a single worm and a “thumper,” the device the Fremen plant in the sand to call a worm, Fantasy Land News reported.

In Canada, the Cineplex chain went a step further. Its $34.99 Sandworm Thumper Popcorn Tub has a thumper that actually vibrates, MobileSyrup reported, under the headline “The NSFW Dune popcorn bucket is back, and it vibrates now.” Cineplex also has a two-worm “shareable” tub for $32.99.

The collectibles go on sale Dec. 17 at select theaters, while supplies last, ahead of the film’s Dec. 18 opening. Cinemark, Harkins and Marcus are getting a copper-colored single-worm bucket. AMC hasn’t announced U.S. prices.

Where the joke started

This is a sequel to a sequel’s bucket. In early 2024, AMC sold a $24.99 sandworm bucket for Dune: Part Two: a tall, ridged tan cylinder with a round, toothed opening at the top that you reach into for popcorn. People online took one look and decided it resembled an adult toy, and CinemaBlend collected the posts.

Saturday Night Live made it a sketch on Feb. 3, 2024. Host Ayo Edebiri and Marcello Hernández played high school students whose flirting takes a turn once the bucket comes out, and the punchline was that the bucket is real. By March 6, People reported, eBay listings ran mostly $40 to $100, and one seller was asking $846.36.

AMC says it never saw it coming. “We would have never imagined the Dune thing,” Elizabeth Frank, AMC’s chief content officer, told Variety, as GameSpot reported. “We would have never created it knowing it would be celebrated or mocked.” Director Denis Villeneuve took it in stride, saying it had “created a lot of fun online.”

Then Hollywood leaned in

Marvel didn’t wait to be mocked. On May 30, 2024, Ryan Reynolds released an ad for the Deadpool & Wolverine bucket, a Wolverine helmet with a wide-open mouth, in which popcorn tumbles onto its face and butter dribbles down the side, The Hollywood Reporter reported. “Designed by Deadpool” is scrawled across it. AMC sold it as an exclusive for $29.99, NBC News reported.

“Years from now they will look back at 2024 as the year the War of the Popcorn Buckets began,” Reynolds wrote. Hugh Jackman reposted it with the caption “Don’t try to butter me up.” Villeneuve’s response, to CTV’s Etalk: “They are tremendously jealous of our bucket,” which he called “unmatchable.”

Others followed. Regal’s bucket for Venom: The Last Dance was the character’s head with an open mouth to reach into; /Film’s headline complained it “Needs More Tongue.” The makers of Amazon’s The Boys posted a bucket so explicit it could only be a joke, and it was: Looper reported it was a promotion on the show’s Instagram and never went into production.

Why theaters keep making them

Because they sell. AMC wasn’t selling merchandise at all about three years before NBC News reported on the trend in early 2025. In 2024 it made about $65 million from novelty buckets, sippers and T-shirts, NBC News reported. “It started with us in a big way with our own movie,” CEO Adam Aron said. Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble said of a 2023 Scream VI bucket, “We sold out of the thing immediately.”

The New York Times reported in July that AMC estimated its buckets would bring in $100 million in 2026, nearly double 2023, that Cinemark’s merchandise revenue rose 40% from 2024 to 2025, and that Regal expected more than $40 million in merchandise sales this year. Prices have climbed with demand: a 22-inch Trojan horse bucket for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sold for $70.

There’s a reason chains love them. Distributors take roughly 60% to 70% of ticket revenue, but theaters keep what they make at the concession stand, Econlife noted, summarizing reporting by The Times and USA Today. Meanwhile U.S. box office receipts fell 3.4% in 2024 to $8.74 billion, NBC News reported. AMC’s Nels Storm, vice president of food and beverage product strategy, kept expectations in check: “I would never suggest that popcorn buckets are the reason people go to the movies.”

The Despoiler’s take

Put a creature’s mouth on a container you stick your hand into, and the internet will do the rest. AMC says the first sandworm was an accident. By the second Dune bucket, with two mouths and a vibrating cousin up north, it’s hard to call it one. The joke is the marketing now, and so far it keeps selling out.

The Dune: Part Three buckets go on sale Dec. 17, the night before the film opens. The same day, Dec. 18, Avengers: Doomsday opens too, and ScreenCrush is already asking whether Marvel will answer with a bucket of its own. Seen a bucket at a Miami Valley theater that made you do a double take? Tell us.