Marketing Movies Is Harder Than Ever. And Here Comes ‘One Battle After Another.’

Warner Bros. has been defying the odds.

At a time when ticket sales are still running 23 percent behind prepandemic levels, when big stars rarely translate into obvious wins, when even superheros cannot be relied on to cut through the clutter, the studio has for months delivered hit after hit, regardless of genre, budget or cast.

“A Minecraft Movie.” “Sinners.” “Final Destination: Bloodlines.” “F1: The Movie.” “Superman.” “Weapons.” “The Conjuring: Last Rites.” It’s a run that has left rival studios staring in disbelief and box office analysts struggling to come up with comparisons.

What has Warner Bros. discovered in this difficult box office moment that the rest of Hollywood has not?

The studio credits its filmmakers and a diversified release slate. But the hit parade can also be attributed to savvy salesmanship. Dana Nussbaum, Christian Davin and John Stanford — young executives who took over Warner’s movie marketing department in January — have been drafting a new playbook that includes a social media “war room” operating around the clock and online influencers playing a bigger role.

“Every campaign must be bespoke, and you have to quickly shift based on what the audience is telling you,” Ms. Nussbaum said. “The audience moves really fast, and you have to be moving at the same pace.”

Their approach will be tested this weekend with “One Battle After Another,” an R-rated epic from the auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson. The movie — part drama, part absurdist comedy, part adventurous chase — cost at least $130 million to make. (Some competing studios said the price was even higher.) Add another $70 million or more in global marketing costs.

It’s the kind of movie that is not supposed to succeed in theaters anymore, at least not on a level that would justify that level of spending. “One Battle After Another” is an original story, not part of an existing franchise or based off widely known characters. It is two hours and 50 minutes long. The plot and tone are almost impossible to convey in a trailer or with a quippy log line. Mr. Anderson does not love to do publicity, and none of his stars — Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall — are especially engaged on social media.

And to top it all off, the movie is political: Mr. Anderson has things to say about immigration and white supremacy, topics that could be turnoffs to some moviegoers, especially if they disagree with his perspective.

To be a theatrical success for Warner Bros., “One Battle After Another” will need to collect at least $300 million worldwide by the end of its run, according to several box office analysts. (Ticket sales are typically split 50-50 between studios and theaters.) The highest grossing film in Mr. Anderson’s nearly 30-year career is “There Will Be Blood,” which earned $76 million worldwide in 2007 on production and marketing costs of roughly $40 million.

To lure moviegoers, the team is using a combination of traditional and digital forms of advertising. Yes, Americans will see commercials on both broadcast and streaming platforms, and see influencers, both young content creators and celebrities like Peyton Manning, talking up the movie. The studio has also worked with the hugely popular online game Fortnite so that players can be characters from the movie.

At the same time, the marketing team at Warner Bros. is betting on one of the oldest tools in Hollywood’s arsenal: word-of-mouth screenings. In the past two weeks, the studio has shown the film in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City and London with the cast and filmmaker trotting along for Q&A sessions.

“The superpower of this movie was always going to be word of mouth,” Mr. Davin said in an interview. “This is a movie that, when people get out of screenings, they want to talk about it. They want to speculate about it. They want to dissect every little second and talk about parts of the movie that they hadn’t seen in the advertising.”

Warner Bros. has touted endorsements from cinematic royalty — Spielberg, Iñárritu, Scorsese — and positioned the film, which has received exceptional reviews, as a very likely contender for Best Picture at the Oscars. But the studio has ardently tried to avoid being labeled an “art film.”.

Still, opening weekend in the United States and Canada is looking quiet. Based on advance ticket sales and surveys that track moviegoer interest, “One Battle After Another” is expected to sell $20 million to $25 million in tickets from Friday through Sunday.

Warners’ battle for the public’s attention is happening as movie marketing is as challenged as ever.

In 2024 the number of wide releases that generated above 50 percent awareness among moviegoers was at a near record low at 62 titles, according to a recent report from the Hollywood research firm National Research Group. Studio marketers across the industry lament that costs are going up while the ability to break through to the public is on the decline. And they push back against the notion that digital advertising is cheaper than traditional. For example, a global advertising buy on TikTok can cost more than a 30 second spot during an N.F.L. broadcast.

“Reaching a wide audience is the hardest it’s ever been,” said Terry Press, a veteran Hollywood marketing executive. “There is no place in broadcast to reach them, other than sports, and digital is just a giant maw, a cacophony of noise.”

Warner Bros. used to be known as the “spray and pray” studio: With 20 movies released annually, it often spent heavily on TV ads, billboards, bus sides, in-theater displays and lavish premieres. But long gone are the days where you can spend your way to success.

“That thinking is really outdated,” Ms. Nussbaum said.

Ms. Nussbaum handles strategy, research and partnerships; Mr. Davin oversees global public relations, digital and multicultural marketing; and Mr. Stanford is in charge of all the creative. The three work closely with the chairs of the movie studio, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. And they have more voices at the table, with younger executives weighing in frequently.

Responding and interacting with potential audiences appears to be one of their top priorities.

When the studio released its first teaser for “Minecraft” in 2024, fans of the game were underwhelmed. The marketing team quickly re-cut a second trailer that led with a “Take Two” clapper as a cheeky acknowledgment of missing the mark.

Then in May, just as the movie was released, they learned about a snippet of the movie illicitly recorded in a theater and available online, in which the audience spontaneously threw popcorn during a scene. Rather than fight to pull the video down, the standard Hollywood response, the team chose not to fight to have it removed from the internet in the hopes of it going viral. The tactic worked, helping to propel that film to $958 million in worldwide grosses, much to the chagrin of theater cleaning crews.

On “Sinners,” the studio encouraged influencers to interact with specific scenes from the film, supplying them with the content that then spread widely online.

Warner Bros. is choosing to focus its campaign for “One Battle After Another” on the core father-daughter relationship and playing up the humor, specifically Mr. DiCaprio’s aging revolutionary, who spends the majority of the film in a bathrobe.

A recent spot, which aired during last week’s Monday Night Football game and online, used Mr. Manning. He played an increasingly exasperated version of himself, a retired star quarterback, on a mock phone call with Mr. DiCaprio’s character in a comedic scene from the film where he is trying to remember a password from years ago.

Mr. Manning, who was famous for yelling “Omaha” when lined up before a play, offered up his own password.

“It was Omaha!” Mr. Manning said after hanging up. “O-ma-ha! Easy!”