The theater chain is offering a specialty alcoholic beverage at its locations. However, it’s getting exposure for an unappealing reason.
After strong daily outings and major buzz, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice expectedly took the #1 spot this weekend, pulling in $110 million and marking not only the third-best opening weekend of the year but one of Tim Burton’s biggest box office openings ever, trailing only Alice in Wonderland. For the record, 1988’s Beetlejuice took in $8 million on its opening weekend. Even when adjusted for inflation, the sequel pulled in more than five times that over the course of just one weekend.
While that’s quite the earning for a 36-year-old sequel, movie theaters showcasing the film would attempt to profit extra from the film by offering auxiliary items. While this year saw movie-themed popcorn buckets go viral for their designs, AMC theaters, which offer alcoholic drinks for their age-appropriate audiences, attempted to sell a Beetlejuice Beetlejuice-themed drink called the Sandworm Slayer. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the drink is going viral, but for an unappealing reason — the regular-sized drink that comes in a disposable plastic cup is priced at $31.
Per THR, the concoction is a 24-ounce cocktail made with blue and black raspberry juice and “premium vodka.” And the “sandworm” aspect comes from the drink getting topped off with gummy worms. The drink went viral after a posting on social media from an attendee reported on his drink’s total. The post included the caption, “I bought the AMC BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE themed drink. It cost $31 dollars…” An annoyed commenter would humorously reply, “Naw Beetlejuice would’ve had to show up and bring me my drink for that price. You could have bought 6 shares of AMC Theatres stock with that $31, not sure which one would have been worth the price.”
This particular AMC location was revealed to have been in California. According to AMC’s internal research department, the regular price at 92% of AMC’s locations is $21 plus tax. This particular location would apparently include some unique liquor pricing laws, which would bump the pricing up to $28.25. AMC would claim that the drink “like so many of our movie-tie-in drinks, is wildly popular across the AMC circuit and sold very well during the weekend.”