Marty Supreme's Big Orange Dream

Timothée Chalamet strikes an ironic pose as ping pong star Marty Mauzer showing off a box of Wheaties with his picture on it 

By Aria Novosedlik

If you’ve been on YouTube lately and have a relatively well-adjusted algorithm controlling your feed, you’ve probably come across a bizarrely named Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme_11.08.2025.

It’s a name that, at first glance, appears to either be an unintentionally leaked file that some intern may lose their job over, maybe failed clickbait by nobody in particular. After days of running across this thing, it finally outlasted my ‘play next’ countdown and autoplayed itself against my wishes. 

Turns out this video is a very intentional and clever piece of marketing for A24’s upcoming movie Marty Supreme featuring Chalamet in the lead role. The twenty minute (fake) Zoom call has an overbearing and pharisaic Timothée looming over his hapless (also fake) marketing team as they develop absurdly lofty strategies to communicate the movie’s themes to the world. 

Chalamet’s brilliant ideas include painting the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower orange, renting a Goodyear blimp and painting it orange, and having the blimp secured to the Empire State building’s spire as it rains ping pong balls down on the streets below. A24’s marketing team (again, these are actors) must sit through Chalamet’s musings and stroke his ego like you, dear reader, have probably had to do countless times in the past with those ‘clients that know what they want’. We’ve all been there.

This ingenious piece of meta-marketing—a marketing campaign within a marketing campaign—could not have been applied to a more fitting movie. The plot of ‘Marty Supreme’ goes like this: A young man from 50’s Brooklyn wants to make it big and decides that the best way to do so is to bring ping pong to America. 

Sounds like a farce, right? A total comedy. But it’s actually listed as a ‘dramedy’, a growing genre that younger generations relate to more effectively. The actual trailer for Marty – much more conventional than the zoom parody – is unexpectedly high-octane, with a lot more fist fights and chase scenes than one would generally associate with table tennis. What’s relevant to the not-as-fake-as-you-thought fake marketing zoom call is the blurring of lines between movie categories; they’re going for full head-scratching vibes on this entire project – marketing materials included – and it would appear to be working.


Just a few days ago, a user on Los Angele’s subreddit posted a thread titled ‘Big orange movie blimp over the streets of LA today. Was very confused what this was even about at first.’ Subreddits from several other large US cities were likewise populated with posts made by confounded blimp witnesses. In fact many Googled ‘Marty Supreme’ and ‘Dream Big’– both imprinted across these orange blimps, only to have Google float the very same poorly sketched blimp Chalamet shows to his clueless team in their meeting.

The blimp as conceptualized by Chalamet for the benefit of his marketing team, and as seen floating across the screen on Google’s landing page, 

But guess what? While their marketing meeting may have been in jest, Chalamet made good on his word (literally) and fruitionized all the ideas he put out there. That includes his proposal of having Marty Supreme grace the front of Wheaties boxes—one of which has already sold for $510 on eBay. (No joke). If you prefer to follow Marty’s ‘pursuit of greatness’ in a more sartorial way, there’s also an entire clothing line designed by Doni Nahmias as featured in ELLE. In fact GQ queried whether the Marty Supreme jacket might be the 'defining garment of 2025'.

It’s rare to see movie merch marketed towards an adult demographic, especially for PG-13 dramas. One could argue that Marvel flicks or the Star Wars franchise are heavy on merch and aren’t primarily for children, but PG fantasies inherently don’t have a fixed-age demographic. 

Possibly the defining garment of 2025, according to GQ magazine Photo: Matthew Kavanagh

What distributor A24 is trying to do—and not just with Marty Supreme, but all of its projects—is relatively unprecedented. As per their Reddit page: ‘A24 (est. 2012) is an independent film & television studio (The Brutalist, Everything Everywhere All at Once) that has helped bring indie film and filmmakers into the mainstream while also building a popular brand’. 

In such an oversaturated content market, where getting views is not enough anymore, content creators of all shapes and sizes are relying heavily on merch. From YouTubers like Phillip Defranco to Twitch streamers like Hasan Piker, selling branded knick-knacks and clothing has become a lucrative way to keep their channels running smoothly despite the unpredictability of viewership. 

A24 is using a strategic approach to movies that’s more commonly seen within the music industry, especially when artists brand their tours (looking at you, Taylor’s ‘Eras’ tour). They’ve even got Christmas ornament sets on their site’s store, inspired by their 2018 movie ‘Hereditary’. Anyone want a decapitated pigeon head on their tree this year?


Does Marty Supreme’s plot align with A24’s marketing campaign arc? Yes, but only in the sense that they are both selling the ‘dream big’ schtick. While the tone of the movie doesn’t match the irony of the campaign, it’s clear to see why A24 did what it did. They needed to give a wink and a nod to viewers so they’d be able to capitalize on the potential merch sales behind ‘dream big’. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with next.

Aria Novosedlik is a Toronto-based designer, writer and researcher.