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If you’d told me as 2023 was ending that popcorn buckets would be talked about as much as they have in 2024, I wouldn’t have believed you. Then again, that’s only because I didn’t know about that NSFW Dune 2 popcorn bucket that fans thought looked like a sex toy. The container modeled after the sandworms on Arrakis went so viral that Ryan Reynolds pivoted to a lewd Wolverine bucket for Deadpool & Wolverine. Now the guys behind Dune 2’s popcorn bucket has explained why creating the online sensation was a big challenge.
Marcus Gonzalez, the global creative director of Zinc Group, the company behind the Dune 2 popcorn bucket, talked with Vulture about the origins behind this piece of film merchandise. Regarding why it was more difficult to come up with a design for this bucket compared to others, Gonzalez started off by saying this:
Each movie has the same basic tenet: What is iconic, and what do you want to take home? Dune was a challenge because it doesn’t necessarily have iconic characters, as opposed to a Marvel movie. Whereas horror movies, not talking about Friday the 13ths or Saws, don’t have specific things to go off of.
I see what he means. While the Dune mythology crafted by author Frank Herbert is filled with colorful characters and ranks as one of the greatest sagas in science fiction, there isn’t really a character who looks unique enough to lend themselves to being envisioned in popcorn bucket form. The only one I can think of who comes remotely close is Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, played by Stellan Skarsgård in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies. Even then, I can’t see him being visually distinctive enough to be envisioned in bucket form.
So with Dune characters off the table, that left Marcus Gonzalez and the team at Zinc Group with very few options left for Dune 2’s popcorn bucket. As he continued below, while the pain box that the Bene Gesserit use was also considered, ultimately the sandworm made the most sense, and then they had to figure out how this creature would be represented:
One idea was the pain box. But just by looking at it, you’re not going to know what it is unless you’re a big Dune fan. We kept going back to the worm. The challenge was doing the body and making it work as a popcorn bucket. How do you have it not look … a certain way? We thought we’d found a good solution. The art director suggested, ‘What if we had the worm coming out of the ground and that goes on the tin?’ We’re really just designing the lid more than the tin. We landed on ‘How cool would it be to stick your hand in it?’ We talked about the teeth and how they weren’t going to work if they’re made out of plastic because you’ll get all scratched up, so we went with the silicone material. We thought it would be something unique and different, which it was. We didn’t know what people would see and think about afterward.
Gonzalez also acknowledged in the interview that when the Dune 2 popcorn bucket, which was produced more than half a year before the movie itself arrived on the 2024 release schedule, was first shown online, he went into “panic mode.” He was concerned whether the bucket would be “taken the wrong way” and wondered if they’d overlooked anything. Fortunately, the bucket’s online fame literally paid off, as it’s sold like crazy, including at San Diego Comic-Con last month. Rod Mason, Zinc Group’s vice president of business development, also mentioned that this has led to an increased demand in popcorn buckets from both theaters and non-cinema clients.
If you’re lucky enough to have acquired the sandworm popcorn bucket, use it the way it was intended to be and fill it up with that cinematic snack favorite while you’re streaming Dune 2 with your Max subscription, or any movie, really. Since it looks like Dune Messiah will come out in 2026, I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of bucket is designed for Denis Villeneuve’s final outing in this franchise.