How Fall 2, Nosferatu, and the Backrooms turned immersive viewing stunts into film marketing's best earned media tactic

On August 22, Lionsgate held two special screenings of Fall 2: Deadpoint in Los Angeles. Rather than watching from a traditional theater seat, attendees were challenged to stand on elevated platforms for the entire screening, testing their balance and endurance as the tension built on screen. The film's central premise is being trapped at a dizzying height. The screening format is the premise. The one rule: stay on the ledge for the entire movie.

Fall 2 opens September 2, and this activation is the latest data point in a pattern that has been building across two years: studios and distributors increasingly treating the experiential viewing stunt as a campaign cornerstone.

As one industry observer put it: "Would you watch The Blair Witch Project in the woods? Jaws in the ocean? How about Fall 2: Deadpoint while standing hundreds of feet above the ground?" When the marketing experience and the film's core premise are the same thing, the earned media multiplier handles the rest.

Each of the three campaigns below works for the same underlying reason: the experience is native to the film's world, not bolted onto it.

Nosferatu at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, December 2024:

Focus Features, Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, and Bloody Disgusting opened the Nosferatu: The Immersive Experience at the Masonic Lodge inside Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where guests could observe screen-used props, occult artifacts, and relics, and experience Robin Carolan's original score as a live soundscape. The initial ticket allotment sold out in less than two hours, prompting a second allotment to be released. The experience ran three nights ahead of the Christmas Day release. Nosferatu grossed $182 million worldwide on a $50 million budget. Robert Eggers told Forbes directly: "A massive part of the success of the film has been the marketing. The really creative, splashy stuff, the events, the sigil decoding, and all that stuff came from Focus Features marketing team."

The Conjuring: Last Rites, priests blessing audiences, September 2025.

Rather than a one-location event, Warner Bros. arranged for actual priests to bless audiences before screenings at theaters nationwide. The activation is premise-native to a film about demonic possession, requires minimal production cost, scales across hundreds of theaters simultaneously, and generates social content at every location. Each screening becomes its own event, and the blessing itself (the act, the ritual, the slightly absurd real-world collision with the film's fiction) is the photograph. Smarthouse Creative named it one of the best marketing moments of 2025: "When theaters bring in actual priests to bless audiences, you know the marketing has crossed into performance art."

A24's Backrooms pop-up, Burbank, May 2026.

A24 launched a free immersive pop-up experience in Burbank, allowing fans to enter the unsettling world of Backrooms ahead of its May 29 release. The installation recreated the film's liminal space aesthetic in a 30,000-square-foot maze of yellow-wallpapered corridors and fluorescent lighting, with a secret entrance and specific visual cues from the film. Stars Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor appeared in person. A24 also filmed a live DJ set inside the installation and released it on YouTube as a standalone piece of content. Backrooms opened to $44 million and has grossed $330 million worldwide on a $10 million budget, making it A24's highest-grossing film in history.

Global experiential marketing spend reached a record $128.35 billion in 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time (PQ Media). The immersive events segment specifically is projected to grow from $1.9 billion to $9.3 billion by 2030, a 31.4% compound annual growth rate. The underlying data is what makes the case:

The Fall 2 elevated screening is marketing to everyone who sees those 100 people's social content.

The Nosferatu Cemetery experience was not marketing to the few hundred attendees who got through the sold-out tickets; it generated coverage in Bloody Disgusting, Forbes, Fangoria, Macabre Daily, JoBlo, and Cinemablend from a three-night event.

The reason the format works for horror specifically is the same reason in-world marketing works for horror specifically: the audience already wants to feel the film before they see it. The person who stands on an elevated platform for Fall 2's runtime has had a physical experience that makes the trailer feel like a memory. That is a conversion mechanic no digital channel can replicate.

Three conditions determine whether an immersive activation generates that multiplier or costs a significant sum and reaches only the people in the room. The premise has to justify the format: Fall 2's elevated platforms work because standing on a ledge is the film's entire concept; a generic horror pop-up with branded props does not generate the coverage these did. The location has to carry independent earned media value: Hollywood Forever Cemetery generates press on its own; a convention center breakout room does not. And access has to be limited enough to create urgency: Nosferatu sold out in under two hours, the Backrooms pop-up required advance reservations, and the Fall 2 screenings are invite-only.

The one consistent failure mode: an immersive activation where the format and the film's premise are unconnected. Studios occasionally build pop-ups that are essentially branded decoration (themed bars, costume photo and merchandise tables) rather than experiences native to the film's world. These generate attendance but not earned media, because there is nothing for the person who did not attend to share.

EXHIBITION 🎬 2026 global box office is on track for $34.7 billion, the strongest year for moviegoing since before the pandemic (Campaign Live) Mid-year box office data for 2026 shows the global box office outpacing expectations, estimated to reach a record-breaking mid-year gross of $16.6 billion, with full-year revenue projected to reach $34.7 billion, anchored by Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey alongside unexpected viral horror hits such as Obsession. Campaign Live's analysis attributes the recovery not just to the release slate but to a shift in how studios are treating the theatrical experience: immersive activations like the Barbie Dreamhouse Airbnb and similar stunts generate "content that spreads far beyond the actual event itself," creating FOMO and a sense of cultural immediacy that translates to opening weekend urgency.

CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 📋 Cinemark launched its first-ever brand campaign this year, built entirely around immersive theater as a differentiator (Marketing Brew) Wanda Gierhart Fearing, Cinemark's global chief content and marketing officer, told Marketing Brew that social and creators will be a key mechanism moving forward, while her team continues to craft the customer experience as a marketing asset in itself. Cinemark's "It's Show Time" brand campaign, launched in late 2025, is the first time a major exhibitor has built a national campaign around the argument that the in-theater experience is irreplaceable rather than simply convenient. The timing maps directly onto the broader studio shift toward experiential activation: when the theater itself becomes the campaign, the economics of immersive marketing start to make sense.