At just past 7 on Thursday evening, shrieks and flashbulbs filled Grand Street in Manhattan, as Timothée Chalamet, dressed in a pink hoodie and as yet unreleased Dior sneakers, led a team of pingpong-ball-helmeted accomplices into the pop up for his upcoming movie “Marty Supreme.” The film, directed by Josh Safdie, tells the story of Marty Mauser, a fictional manic pingpong champion from the 1950s who turns whatever he touches into sheer chaos.
About a minute later, the 29-year-old Mr. Chalamet disappeared into the storefront. The cries for his attention abated. Timmymania was on pause. But the line to buy “Marty” merch snaked back for over two blocks, slowly funneling the throng to purchase $250 wind-breakers and $95 sweatpants bearing the title of a movie that most, if not all of them, will not see until it is released on Christmas Day.
“I was just excited to get something that’s super exclusive,” said Colin Van Hoek, 20, of Yonkers, N.Y., who arrived in line around 1:30. Nearly four hours later he had a new “Marty Supreme” jacket on his back and his oh-so patient girlfriend, Ava, was the proud owner of an $18 key chain depicting a silhouette of Mr. Chalamet’s character sprinting during a pivotal scene.
“I’ve been following this jacket for a while,” said Mr. Van Hoek. It was hard not to online. Celebrities and athletes, like Kid Cudi, Misty Copeland and Mr. Chalamet have posted themselves wearing “Marty Supreme” windbreakers. Fans, eager to take part, began buying dupes online.
“The only people who had it until today were like Tom Brady and the Kardashians,” said Mr. Van Hoek, referring to the genuine Marty-article.
“This is something to help amplify and allow people to really know the movie’s coming,” said Doni Nahmias, who designed the collection alongside Mr. Chalamet. Many movies, especially those released by A24, might have a singular tee or a dad cap as a tie-in, but this was a full-fledged clothing collection, something closer to what the rapper then know as Kanye West did with his “Saint Pablo” tour than what is normally seen from the movie industry.
The 24-piece collection includes logoed $80 polos and $30 socks. These pop-ups will continue in other, yet-to-be-announced cities leading up to the movie’s official release.
Mr. Nahmias, who runs Nahmias, a Los Angeles clothing label, said the clothes were initially conceived (with an assist from the actor’s stylist Taylor McNeill) just for Mr. Chalamet to wear in promoting the movie. But, as the assortment grew, A24, the studio releasing “Marty Supreme” became involved and decided to release the clothes publicly.
Mr. Nahmias, a basketball fan, was particularly proud of the “running man” symbol, which also appears on hats and zipper pulls. “It’s Timmy’s Jumpman,” he said, alluding to Michael Jordan’s unmistakable watermark.
The store in New York was open for just four hours. Racks were stark and metal barricades kept the lines orderly. The “Marty Supreme” marketing team has leaned into the film’s theme of athletic excellence. Dotted around the pop-up were TVs playing clips of other greats: a supercut of Wayne Gretzky breaking a hockey record, Simone Biles winning gold and the Yankees taking the World Series.
The focal point was a pumpkin orange box truck filled with matching ping pong balls. (The pumpkin color as the “Marty Supreme” answer to “Barbie” pink.) All evening long, fans stopped in front of it to take victorious selfies with their purchases.
“We were like any size, any color,” said Taylor Wadsworth, 26, standing outside the pop-up with a heaving bag of merch at her feet. She and her friend Ella Ford, 25, had both cut out from work around 2, and had scored matching “Marty Supreme” jackets.
The orange wasn’t to Ms. Ford’s tastes, but she got the red. She too was already wearing it.
This blink-and-it’s-gone shop was another experiment in how to whip up excitement for a movie at a moment when movies feel anything but that. Studios can no longer just release a film, they have to event-ize it. Some chose singalong showings and custom popcorn boxes to stoke buzz. The forces behind “Marty Supreme” went with gonzo social media videos (this week Mr. Chalamet posted a mock brainstorming session for the film’s advertising: one imagined idea, paint the Statue of Liberty ping-pong-ball orange) and a streetwear pop-up.
If this pop-up was a test of whether the movie industry should go headlong into these music-tour-style merch events, a simple fact works against them: Not every movie can star Mr. Chalamet.
As fans expressed on Thursday, Mr. Chalamet simmers with a draw-them-in star power that many pundits will say has gone extinct in contemporary Hollywood.
“He knows how to sell the personality piece of it — we don’t have a lot of movie stars our age that are doing that,” said Jenna Soucia-Bergman, 29, who, with her friend Kayla Johnson, 29, walked away with a stash of hats and jerseys. (Some of the products, they clarified, were for other friends.)
“He does a good job of being the face” of his movies, said Ms. Soucia-Bergman. Perhaps easy to do when the guys around you have pingpong balls over their faces.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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