The romantic fantasy film Wicker, starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgard, is building an unusual marketing campaign ahead of its late-October theatrical release, complete with a themed popcorn bucket and a one-night 4DX screening event.
The film, written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, is based on the short story The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills-Jones. Colman plays a reclusive fisherwoman in a conservative village who, tired of being mocked for remaining unmarried, asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband. The creation, played by Skarsgard, comes to life, and the couple’s devotion unsettles the community around them.
The cast also includes Elizabeth Debicki, Peter Dinklage as the basketmaker, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan and Richard E. Grant. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is scheduled to open in United States cinemas on October 23, with a British release following later in the month.
Cinema chain Regal has joined the recent wave of elaborate concession merchandise with a Wicker popcorn bucket shaped around the torso of the wicker husband. Customers can also download a design to print their own version at home and bring it for a small popcorn, according to reports. The promotion turns a quiet adult fable into a social-media object weeks before release.
Distributor Black Bear is adding a separate theatrical hook: a one-night 4DX presentation on October 28 at participating venues. The format uses moving seats and environmental effects such as wind, water, vibration and scent. It is more often associated with action spectacles than with romantic fantasy, which is precisely why the booking stands out.
Reports say the 4DX event followed audience requests after the trailer circulated. Whether that reflects broad demand or smart positioning, it gives exhibitors a second date to sell after opening weekend. Independent and mid-budget films increasingly need such event treatment to compete with franchise releases for screens and attention.
Wicker’s premise could easily be played as a joke. The cast suggests a different balance: Colman’s grounded emotional work, Skarsgard’s physical transformation into an artificial husband and Dinklage as the craftsman who makes the impossible. Early festival reviews have been positive, according to summaries, but the commercial test will be whether audiences treat the film as more than a meme.
The popcorn bucket may get the first laugh. The film still has to earn the second look.
The Wicker campaign reflects how mid-budget films now compete. Without a franchise or a superhero budget, distributors turn every element into an event: festival reviews, a novelty bucket fans can print at home, a single-night format usually reserved for action films. Each stunt risks making the film look like a joke before audiences see it. But the story itself, about a woman who refuses the role her village assigns her, has a melancholy core that the cast can carry. If word of mouth matches the marketing imagination, Wicker could become the rare adult fable that audiences discover together in cinemas rather than alone on streaming months later.
Regal’s print-at-home twist is part of the strategy. Rather than selling only an expensive collectible in the lobby, the chain lets fans make the object themselves and rewards them at the concession stand, turning social-media posts into foot traffic. It follows a run of novelty buckets for major releases that sold out and traded online at marked-up prices. Wicker is a far smaller film than those blockbusters, which makes the experiment interesting: if a handmade-looking bucket can trend for an independent fantasy, exhibitors gain a marketing tool that costs them little more than popcorn. The October 23 opening will show whether novelty translates into tickets.
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