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With Super Bowl spots now up to a reported $8-10m, the market has grown a little less welcoming to Hollywood, an industry still not quite up to pre-pandemic numbers (the global box office for 2025 was down almost $10bn on 2019).
So while last night saw us assaulted with ads for beer and, depressingly, AI, there was a continued decrease in the number of major film ads, a harder spend to justify in this weakened climate. But the biggest of guns still came out, from Spielberg to Ghostface to the Minions …
The Mandalorian and Grogu
Disney’s Star Wars strategy – decrease quality of movies, increase amount of TV shows – hasn’t really been paying off all that well, Andor aside. While there is a fanbase for The Mandalorian and his little baby Yoda friend, it remains to be seen if a big enough audience is excited enough to see this as something other than an extended episode of something they’re used to watching on their smartphone. I do appreciate a specially made – or at least freshly packaged – big game teaser, though, not purely reliant on the same cocktail of clips, and let’s hope such invention suggests more much-needed creativity in the series to come.
Disclosure Day
Arriving at just the right time for increasingly energised UFO conspiracy theorists, Steven Spielberg’s big return to the sci-fi genre is still looking like a whole bunch of question marks (Good or bad aliens? Bad CGI? Why is every American played by a Brit?) but it is thrilling to have a summer blockbuster that’s actually original once again. The latest spot shows a giant ship emerging through clouds, Independence Day-style, and some more questionable accents. Time will tell.
Minions & Monsters
A pretty smart new direction for the consistently popular Minions franchise (perhaps the most reliable animated series Hollywood now has?), which sees them aim for movie stardom. As one would expect from a Minions trailer, there is little to no understandable dialogue here (maybe kids would figure out more words after endless rewatches of the previous films) but it looks like another sure Disney-enraging thing.
Scream 7
Poor old Sidney Prescott. It’s almost been 30 years of menacing phone calls, non-lethal stab wounds, severed relationships (some literally), unwanted press attention, and now, as the Scream franchise continues to be more commercially successful than ever before (the sixth chapter was a record-breaker), here comes Ghostface threatening her teenage daughter. But as Sidney’s bad luck continues, Neve Campbell’s does the opposite. The actor was lured back after taking one film off over a pay dispute, and it’s her most substantial role – and we assume salary – to date. The new spot offers more of the same, keeping the film’s long list of back-from-the-dead cameos under wraps, but the repetition is almost reassuring, the biggest secrets not being spoiled just yet.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
While most of the trailers last night were either confirmed by the studio or predicted by those in the know, no one really saw this one coming. It makes sense really, a surprise reveal of footage from a film that felt like a shock when it was announced, a Quentin Tarantino-penned sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood directed by David Fincher for Netflix. The first tease of Brad Pitt’s return as Cliff Booth looks as stylish as one would expect (despite his move to the streamer, Fincher has remained well outside of the dreaded Netflix murk) while poking fun at what can’t be shown on network TV at such an hour. It’s a fascinating match of auteurs that should make for one of the year’s most unusual films.
Project Hail Mary
Even if I remain a little disappointed with Ryan Gosling’s Reese Witherspoon-like declaration that he will no longer be delving into darker territory, Project Hail Mary is looking like a smart, safe use of his post-Barbie career bump. The Fall Guy might not have set the box office alight, but this sci-fi adventure (which is essentially The Martian but with a cute alien pal) feels like an easier win. The third trailer offers more of the same (thankfully it’s the “final” trailer) and with a budget of $150m, expectations are high, but with a concept less reliant on his global star power and more on effects-heavy space antics, this could be a much-needed leading man hit.
Hoppers
Pixar, a company that used to turn the wildest premises into both critical and commercial gold, has been struggling to impress either side in recent years. After Elio was a historic flop for them, they’re hoping Hoppers might turn the tide, and they might have a safer hit on their hands. It’s a fun, grabby premise – tech that allows humans to masquerade as animals – and while there’s not that much here in this big game spot, here’s hoping the recent billion-dollar success of Zootopia 2’s animated animals will help nudge it along.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
It’s gonna be a Disney-crushing year for Universal, with both a new Minions movie and a sequel to their Mario smash, which made over $1.36bn back in 2023. One could argue that maybe the novelty factor for those on the older, nostalgia-seeking side has weakened given the quality of the first but that might not matter with the younger superfans who are now that much more Nintendo-pilled, eager for another film to quote on a loop. The big game tease was just the reveal that Baby Mario and Baby Luigi will be appearing along with a dinosaur (Universal crowbarring in a Jurassic Park tie-in?) but even if ad spend for this one was kept to a minimum, it’d still be another $1bn in the bank.
Supergirl
Technically this one didn’t actually air during the telecast but rather the Puppy Bowl, which is a) cheaper and b) a smart way to appeal to a female fanbase who might not have been watching an incredibly dull game. There’s not much here we haven’t seen before, other than predictably more dog shots, and I’m a little cautious of the post-Guardians “superhero but rock’n’roll” tone (especially from the director of I, Tonya). But given how surprisingly necessary last year’s Superman felt, there’s potential here.
