Lionsgate and Universal Pictures are adopting TikTok’s “irreverent humor” to reach Gen Z movie fans. 

Lionsgate and Universal Pictures are adopting TikTok’s “irreverent humor” to reach Gen Z movie fans. Gen Z are more likely to be on TikTok than Millennials, so it makes sense that movie studios would try to target them on the app. We told you that some studios have gotten creative with immersive marketing, but Lionsgate and Universal Pictures have been taking a different approach when it comes to promoting their films—by quite literally adopting the generation’s sense of humor into their videos. To promote The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Lionsgate shared a TikTok video featuring one of the movie’s stars Pedro Pascal saying “I’m the daddiest daddy”—user comments marveled at his “daddiness” and also expressed surprise at the channel sharing the clip. The studio also shared a video with the caption “the yassification of #pinocchio” to promote Pinocchio: A True Story. Meanwhile, Universal Pictures has been trying to “stoke nostalgia” around its older movies like Bridesmaids, Erin Brockovich, and Bring It On by posting clips of the films with tongue-in-cheek captions. According to one Universal executive: “We can get a little bit more irreverent and lo-fi with those titles, less precious and more in the vernacular of how people like to communicate on TikTok…It’s just a great place for us to have that ongoing, creative conversation with fans.” (Variety)