If you had told me, at the end of 2023, that there would be as much communication about buckets of popcorn as in 2024, I wouldn’t have believed you. Then again, this is only because I didn’t know about this NSFW Dune 2 popcorn. The bucket that enthusiasts came up with looked like a sex toy. The Arrakis sandworm-inspired container went so viral that Ryan Reynolds turned to a smutty Wolverine bucket for Deadpool.
Marcus Gonzalez, global artistic director of Zinc Group, the company behind the Dune 2 popcorn bucket, spoke with Vulture about the origins of this cinematic product. As for why it was more complicated to come up with a design for this cube compared to others, Gonzalez began by saying the following:
Every film has the same fundamental premise: what is iconic and what should you take home? Dune is a challenge because it doesn’t necessarily have iconic characters, unlike a Marvel movie. While horror movies, not to mention Friday the 13th or Saws, don’t have express stuff to begin with.
I see what you mean. While the Dune mythology created by writer Frank Herbert is full of colorful characters and is among the greatest science fiction sagas, there is rarely a character who is unique enough to be imagined in the form of a cube of popcorn. The only one I can think of who comes close is Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, played by Stellan Skarsgård in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films. Even then, I don’t see it as visually unique enough to think he’s cube-shaped.
So, with the Dune characters off the table, Marcus Gonzalez and the team at Zinc Group had very few features left for Dune 2’s popcorn bucket. As he continued below, although the pain box used by Bene Gesserit was also considered, in the end, the sandworm made the ultimate sense, and then they had to figure out how this creature would be depicted:
One concept was the pain box. But just by watching it, you might not know what it is unless you’re a big fan of Dune. We keep coming back to the computer virus. The challenge was to make the frame and make it work like a popcorn bucket. How do you make it not seem like it. . . in a way?We thought we had discovered a clever solution. The art director suggested, “What if the computer virus came out of the ground and ended up in the box?Actually, we only designed the lid and not the box. We talked about teeth and how they wouldn’t work if they were plastic because you could scratch yourself, so we opted for the silicone material. We thought it would be something exclusive and different, and it did. We did it. I don’t know what other people would see and think next.
Gonzalez also claimed in the interview that when Dune 2’s popcorn bucket, which was produced more than six months before the film arrived according to the 2024 release schedule, was first released online, it went into “panic mode. “They “took the road” and wondered if they had forgotten something. Thankfully, the cube’s online fame literally paid off, as it sold like crazy, and was added at San Diego Comic-Con last month. Rod Mason, vice president of Zinc Group business development, also commented that this has led to increased demand for popcorn buckets from customers in theaters and not theaters.
If you’re lucky enough to have picked up the Sandworm popcorn bucket, use it as intended and fill it up with that favorite cinematic snack while streaming Dune 2 with your Max subscription – or any movie, really. Since it looks like Dune Messiah will be released in 2026, I can’t wait to see what kind of cube will be designed for Denis Villeneuve’s final appearance in this franchise.
A Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse, and Doctor Who gourmet, Adam is a senior content producer at CinemaBlend. He began applying for the site in late 2014, writing exclusively articles about comics, movies, and television, and in addition to expanding into other genres, he also made the leap to publishing. In addition to his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing artistic talent, he also oversees the adjudication of feature films. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and has been quoted several times on Wikipedia. He is aware that he resembles Harry Potter and Clark Kent.
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