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How “Marty Supreme” Turned Table-Tennis Into a Cult Marketing Moment

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Young man with curly hair and glasses wearing a white shirt and green pants standing by a ladder and brick wall
Christopher Peterson

Summary:

  • The film Marty Supreme transformed into a cultural event with Timothée Chalamet, A24, and creative marketing stunts.

  • Chalamet played a mock marketing meeting video that became a meme, blending satire and movie-star narcissism.

  • Real-world activations like a pop-up store, blimp, and merch complemented the film’s oddball appeal for a wider audience.

In late 2025, the upcoming film Marty Supreme didn’t settle for conventional premiere hype. Instead, its marketing campaign evolved into a cultural event in its own right—bringing together meta-advertising, Instagram-ready stunts, and a star who leaned fully into the joke. At the centre of it all is Timothée Chalamet, the indie studio A24, and a ping-pong narrative that would have been niche—if not for the campaign that ensured everyone was talking.

Chalamet’s team rolled out an 18-minute Zoom call video, in which he plays the “star client” in a mock marketing meeting, flinging pitch ideas at a captive team of agency execs: painting the Statue of Liberty orange, sending a fleet of blimps dropping ping-pong balls, and plastering the lead character on cereal boxes. That clip quickly became a meme. The piece earned coverage as “a pitch-perfect, dryly hilarious satire of both corporate-meeting culture and movie-star narcissism.” 

But the film’s team didn’t stop at digital pranks. They complemented the online stunt with real-world activations: a pop-up store in New York, limited-edition merch (including a jacket collaboration with brand Nahmias), and the actual deployment of a bright orange “Marty Supreme” blimp travelling across the U.S. all of which were teased in the initial Zoom piece. 

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The film at hand—loosely based on the life of table-tennis legend Marty Reisman, directed by Josh Safdie and budgeted at $60-70 million—would normally appeal to a niche audience. Yet by leaning into the oddball nature of its subject, the team transformed that underdog ‘sport movie’ story into something culturally contagious.

As the campaign gained traction, it tapped into the realities of the 2025 media landscape. Attention is scattered, feeds move too fast to reward subtlety, and audiences are fluent enough in marketing language to recognize when something is winking at them.

By leaning into the strangeness—rather than smoothing it out—A24 made Marty Supreme feel like an event people discovered rather than a film being sold to them. The merch drops, the street-level stunts, the orange-headed entourage, and the now-infamous Zoom meeting all created a sense of looseness and play that gave the campaign its edge.

The film will debut in 70mm exclusively in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 18 before expanding nationwide on Christmas Day, with additional 70mm engagements landing in select cities on Dec. 25, according to Deadline.  Cinematographer Darius Khondji, who shot the film on 35mm with Arriflex cameras and vintage anamorphic lenses, worked with director Josh Safdie to expand the imagery into a fuller, more immersive 70mm experience. It’s the first time Safdie has released a film in the format.

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