A month ago the production company A24 released a recorded Zoom video of Timothée Chalamet appearing to join a marketing meeting for his new film, Marty Supreme.
Dressed in a bright yellow tank top, the actor tells a screen of apparently bewildered executives: “This [film] has got to be one of the most important things that happens on planet Earth this year.”
In fact it’s a promo for a biopic based on the eccentric life of professional ping-pong hustler Marty Reisman.
Chalamet is gloriously nonchalant and egotistical, forcing the room into a silent meditation about “how great this movie is”. At first glance, it feels like an actor making fun of Oscar-season awards campaigns. But make no mistake: this is an Oscar-season awards campaign.
Although set for release over Christmas, Marty Supreme was first screened at the New York Film Festival in October, making it – just – eligible for the 2026 Oscars. If you believe the rumours, twice-nominated Chalamet is a frontrunner for best actor.
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The modern Oscar campaign was pioneered by the disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein. “He used to go to the old folks’ homes where the retired stunt co-ordinators or whatever were and do screenings there,” says a senior Hollywood publicist who asked to remain anonymous. His efforts to win over the 10,000 or so film professionals who make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences worked: Weinstein’s production studio, Miramax, secured 68 Oscars.
A traditional campaign can be expensive. Studios pay consultants to run months-long campaigns, host dinners and screenings, fly nominees across the country and take out advertising in trade publications. “Every other page is a ‘for your consideration’ ad around award season… as well as outdoor ads on billboards and buses in Los Angeles and New York”, the publicist says. Anora, which won five Oscars last year, cost $6m to make but its awards campaign cost about $18m.
Against that backdrop, Marty Supreme appears to be breaking the mould. The excitement around the film – and Chalamet – has not been driven by print ads or fancy dinners, but an audacious, hyper-online marketing campaign that has captured the attention of gen Z. Marty Supreme-branded jackets, RRP £250, are reselling at £1,700. After rumours circulated online that Chalamet has secretly reinvented himself as a Liverpudlian rapper called “EsDeeKid” the pair released a surprise collaboration on social media.
Last week, during a BBC News interview, Chalamet casually named the Scottish singer Susan Boyle, a breakout star of Britain's Got Talent in 2007, as one of his favourite Brits, baffling viewers and sending social media platforms into meltdown.
‘There were over 1,000 people there. Everyone was just buzzing, it felt like being part of something’
Anthony Varghese, specatator at a Chalamet pop-up event in London
“It’s very much deliberate,” says Joanna Hughston at the gen Z-focused marketing agency GOAT. “Gen Z has a very irreverent sense of humour, and they love it when people do the completely unexpected”.
Those moments are designed to circulate, says Hughston: to be clipped, memed, reposted and debated. She suspects the bizarre interviews during the recent Wicked press tour were the same.
Anthony Varghese, a 27-year-old retail worker, is the target audience. “I’m not even a massive Chalamet fan,” he says, but that didn’t stop him queuing for hours to see the actor for “about a minute” at a Marty Supreme pop-up event in London last week. “There were over 1,000 people there. Everyone was just buzzing, it felt like being part of something,” he says.
That feeling is the point. As cinema tickets grow more expensive and streaming becomes the default, films increasingly need to justify themselves as events. “[Audiences] want to see a film that has cultural impact – something that feels like a moment”, Varghese says.
The question is whether an unorthodox but successful press tour can translate into Oscars gold. The Academy is famously resistant to novelty. Its members are mostly “early 60s, over 65% white and 80% male” and Chalamet’s social media stunts “will only work if they get into the papers”, says the Hollywood publicist. “Fortunately, someone’s clearly hired a PR to make sure it is.”
Another senior industry source who also asked to remain anonymous was more bullish on the outcome. “The Academy won’t care about social media,” they say. But “all the buzz has given the movie extraordinary word of mouth even though it’s not out yet. Plus, the film is actually good. That’s what will get it nominated.”
Photograph by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Airbnb