Each year, the Super Bowl seems to become even more of a celeb-palooza than the last. This year’s game also included a number of ads featuring A-Listers in their natural habitat: the movies. Major studios coughed up Big Game pricing to pitch already-buzzy films such as “The Flash” or the next “Fast and Furious” to the game's massive audience, predicting the investment will more than pay for itself in the near future when viewers plan a night at the movies.

“The Super Bowl has always been about more than just the game—it’s a pop culture moment,” said Asad Ayaz, president of marketing at Walt Disney Studios. “It’s one of the biggest stages to reach a broad, engaged audience and where the advertising is discussed and celebrated.”

Throughout the game, five movie trailers aired nationally from five different studios: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” from Disney, “Fast X” from Universal Pictures, “The Flash” from Warner Bros.’s DC Studios, “Air” from Amazon Studios and “Creed III” from MGM (which is now owned by Amazon). The game also featured a co-branded spot with Heineken for Disney’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

In addition to the game itself, many studios took advantage of the pre-game show, which Ad Age reported sold ad time for less than half of in-game inventory. The hours leading up to kickoff featured Paramount’s “Scream VI,” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” and “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” Disney’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” Sony Pictures' “65” and Universal’s “Cocaine Bear.”  

“Giving a film a teaser in the Super Bowl can be a huge way to get it set off on a really good base level of demand,” said Kevin Krim, CEO of attribution measurement company EDO.

Engagement for “The Flash,” a 60-second trailer during the second quarter, was 24 times higher than the average Super Bowl ad, according to research from EDO. The film is being released on June 16.

This year’s Super Bowl occurred at an interesting point in the movie industry’s path to recovery after COVID-19 brought it to a near standstill. As people have begun returning to cinemas, the flow of releases has not yet returned to pre-pandemic consistency due to stalled productions. With longer lulls in between major releases, films may be able to sustain longer periods of profitability.

A prime example is “Top Gun: Maverick,” which had a trailer in the Super Bowl last year. The film hit theaters in May 2022 and remained on the big screen off-and-on through December, becoming the fifth all-time highest-grossing film at the domestic box office, according to The Numbers.

“Studios are running up against this resurgence of box office with the possibility that they could have an outsized title,” said Alicia Reese, equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities. “So, they have every reason to market this as broadly as they can.”

As previously reported by Ad Age, this year’s Super Bowl saw inventory priced between $6 million and $7 million, a hefty price tag for a film like “The Flash,” which had already drummed up a huge amount of attention between general superhero mania, DC Studios’ turnover in leadership and controversies surrounding its star Ezra Miller.

Reese said that while some recent films have racked up record-breaking box office tallies, the overall market has only reached 65% of 2019’s results—which was $11.4 billion domestically, according to Comscore. A lot of this year’s releases seek to close more of that gap through what Reese called “the fanboy types of titles.” 

In a post-“Maverick” world, “[studios] are going to try their best with each of these titles to reach the broadest audience that they possibly can because now they see what’s possible.”

The Big Game’s use for movie studios is a long game, mainly building awareness for summer or fall blockbusters. “Basically, what you don’t want to do is buy an ad for a movie that’s coming out in a couple weeks,” said Krim, explaining that, by then, marketing to convince people to buy tickets can be better placed in less-expensive programming.

In addition to “The Flash,” another trailer that charted on EDO’s engagement ranking was “Air,” an Amazon Studios film directed by Ben Affleck about the true story of Nike’s first partnership with Michael Jordan, hitting theaters April 5. The film saw engagement over six times that of the average Super Bowl ad, according to EDO.

While Krim attributed the success of “Air” to a confluence of celebrities, the searchability of true stories and “sneaker porn,” he said the larger trend of films turning out in greater force was a growing trend pre-pandemic as well (before the theatrical pause). The 2019 Super Bowl featured trailers from three different studios—in line with the number that bought ads in 2022.

Competition in the entertainment industry has never been higher, with studios battling for high-grossing films alongside pushes to boost subscription numbers for their streaming services. Paramount, for example, used its 2023 in-game ad buy to hype its streaming platform Paramount+.

“We're hitting maximum or peak competitiveness,” said Krim. “So, you've got all of that combining and manifesting itself as a very robust presence in these big events like the Super Bowl.”