Everyone praises Timothée Chalamet’s transcontinental marketing skills.
The star’s wild press tour for “Marty Supreme” has already been praised for helping make A24’s second-biggest debut on its home turf, grossing $27 million over a four-day Christmas weekend. But his unconventional promotional efforts helped Josh Safdie’s acclaimed ping-pong drama set records at studios across the Atlantic and is now the highest-grossing film of all time in the UK.
Late Monday, Jan. 5, the film took the British crown, surpassing A24’s previous title holder, “Civil War,” which earned $8.2 million in 2024, according to people close to the project. This accomplishment is even more impressive considering they accomplished this in less than two full weeks, considering “Marty Supreme” was released on December 26th, and only one of them was a wide release. In its first weekend at approximately 130 locations, it grossed an astonishing $4.38 million (another A24 record).
“Marty Supreme” (distributed in the UK by regular A24 partner Entertainment Film Distribution) currently exceeds the overall UK box office gross of fellow sports feature film “Challengers” ($8.1 million), and its wide break exceeds the opening weekend of awards season rival “One Battle After Another” ($3.3 million). Typical industry estimates for films released in the UK are around 10% of the domestic box office, but Variety understands that Marty Supreme is likely to comfortably beat this.
Safdie’s film, a screwball sports crime thriller loosely based on the life and career of American table tennis player Marty Reisman, was acclaimed in the UK as well as in the US, ranking high on many critics’ best of 2025 lists and with six nominations pending from the London Critics Circle. However, several A24 films had similar reactions. “Everywhere All at Once” also received six nominations at the London Critics Circle Awards and 10 nominations (and one win) at the BAFTAs, but grossed a total of $7.6 million at the UK box office. Meanwhile, “Hereditary” collected $7.3 million.
So the success of Marty Supreme in the UK will be a thank-you orange ping-pong ball to the one-man marketing machine that is Chalamet. Chalamet brought his quirky promotional style to London in mid-December, creating the same viral effect as in America.
On Dec. 13, prompted by Chalamet’s cryptic social media posts from the previous day, thousands of Chalamet fans, mostly teenagers and 20-somethings, flocked to a pop-up store in Holborn to pick up a variety of fashion brand items, including the iconic orange Marty Supreme jacket, which has become a limited edition item this season. Many traveled from all over the UK, some camping overnight (in the extreme winter cold). Reports said there was a fight inside the snake-like queue that had formed.
There was also speculation that Chalamet was leading a double life as the cult masked British rapper and drill artist S.D.Kid. While in the UK, he squashed rumors that were already far-fetched given EsDeeKid’s Liverpudlian accent by posting a video of him rapping with the musician to a remix of his hit song “4Raws.” Unsurprisingly, there was an uproar on social media, with many British rappers praising the song and video.
But perhaps the most memorable moment, and one in line with Britain’s penchant for the quirky and quirky, was when Chalamet praised former Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle.
Scottish singer Boyle, who became a YouTube sensation in 2009 with her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables,” was one of the few Britons he deemed suitable for the “Marty Supreme” cover, along with Lewis Hamilton, David and Victoria Beckham, and rapper Fake Mink.
“She had bigger dreams than any of us,” Chalamet told the BBC, adding that she remembers the 2009 moment “like it was yesterday”.
Chalamet was only 13 at the time, and no one knows if he was honest about his gratitude to Boyle (who later sent him a message to wish him a happy 30th birthday). But given the record-breaking UK box office success of A24’s Marty Supreme and the year’s very strong start in terms of original theatrical releases, few in the film industry will be complaining.
