Timothée Chalamet Versus Tom Cruise: Whose Plan Will Save Theaters?

Two movie stars, two totally different playbooks, same problem: how do you get people to leave the couch and go to a theater in 2025? Timothee Chalamet is leaning into the noise. Tom Cruise is doubling down on the shrine. Both are right about what the job requires now, and neither is pretending the old ways still work.

Chalamet: if people scroll past the ad, become the ad

'People's attention spans are so short these days... How do you convince them to go to the cinema, to spend money to see a film, rather than waiting to stream it illegally, or for it to be available on Netflix? ... I have an audience, so I engage with them, and I give it 150%.'

He is not scolding anyone or pining for 1999. He is acknowledging the reality: movies now compete with phones, feeds, memes, and instant piracy. If you go quiet, you disappear. So he has turned promo into part of the gig. Presence as strategy. Style as signal. Press tours as traveling billboards. And for his A24 film 'Marty Supreme', the plan is simple and cheeky: make going to the theater feel urgent again.

Here is where it gets fun (and a little weird in a good way). The hook is a color. Not just any color — a retina-searing orange. It is not random; it is built into the movie. 'Marty Supreme' centers on a pro table tennis player who ditches standard white ping pong balls for orange ones because they pop more in motion. Chalamet has been wearing that logic on his sleeve — literally.

• The 'Marty Supreme Orange' rollout is everywhere: tangerine leather at the Los Angeles premiere alongside Kylie Jenner; a coordinated look with his mom, Nicole Flender; Gwyneth Paltrow swapping her usual whispery chic for bright orange satin; even a custom Wheaties box.
• He took the prop gag further with a custom black leather paddle holder, basically turning a plot detail into wearable branding.
• He also posted a spoof video pitching over-the-top marketing ideas to A24. Letting the audience in on the joke works because irony outruns sincerity online.
• This is a known playbook, just sharpened: 'Barbie' pink ruled 2023; 'Wicked' leaned on signature character colors for Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo; Zendaya's 'Challengers' tour turned tennis into red-carpet language. Fashion has done this forever — Tiffany Blue, Hermes orange, Valentino PP Pink. Color is instant shorthand.

If it sounds like he is treating marketing as part of the art, he is. The 150% is not a flex; it is the thesis.

Cruise: theaters are the point, not the option

Tom Cruise is fighting the same fight, just from the other end. Less winking, more granite. At Cannes 2022, the 'Top Gun: Maverick' premiere went full spectacle — the French Air Force flew over the red carpet because subtlety is for press notes — and he walked into a packed 1,300-seat auditorium dressed in all black to make his case the old-fashioned way: by saying it out loud and then backing it up.

'I make movies for the big screen. I make movies for the public. It is different to write and create a film for television than for cinema.'

During the pandemic, when release plans were melting, he reportedly called theater owners himself to promise that 'Mission: Impossible 7', 'Mission: Impossible 8', and 'Top Gun: Maverick' were not going to swerve to streaming. Asked if 'Maverick' could have dropped on a service instead, he did not hedge.

'That did not happen and will not happen. Ever.'

And he walks it like he talks it. Cruise sneaks into screenings, buys tickets, posts the receipts, and boosts movies he thinks deserve butts-in-seats attention. He has publicly backed 'Tenet', 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny', 'Oppenheimer', 'Barbie', and 'Twisters'. In 2025, he threw support behind 'Sinners' and 'Ballerina', giving Ana de Armas a shout-out.

Same goal, different lanes

Cruise guards the temple. Chalamet throws the block party and funnels everyone inside. One approach without the other probably does not move the needle much. Together, they at least make the case that seeing something with strangers in the dark is still worth the trip.

So, are we meeting them halfway, or has convenience already won? Are you showing up in orange and buying the ticket, or waiting it out on the couch?

'Marty Supreme' hits US theaters on December 25, 2025.