In between dinosaur action scenes for “Jurassic World Rebirth,” Scarlett Johansson was brainstorming with the team at her skincare brand The Outset about promotions based on how she used products on set. For example: The Botanical Barrier Rescue Balm, a treatment balm in a tin, was soothing on scratches sustained from crawling through thick brush.
Fresh off a successful tie-in with “Wicked” star Ariana Grande’s R.e.m. Beauty, production company Universal had a similar idea, reaching out to The Outset about a potential collaboration.
Fans can shop a range of “Jurassic World Rebirth” merchandise on the front page of the film’s official Amazon store, which sells a Jurassic World velociraptor t-shirt, T-rex Lego set or The Outset’s Skin Survival Kit, which comes in a green safari-style dopp kit. With over $500 million in global box office sales, the new film in the classic dinosaur franchise is one of the biggest contributors to 2025’s box-office comeback. Comscore recorded a 16.5 percent year-over-year increase in summer ticket sales through July 13.
It has also generated revenue for The Outset: Joanne Sulit, chief marketing officer, said opening weekend was “really good” for the brand, but declined to offer an exact figure.
Just two summers after a “Barbie” fashion blitz, skincare and makeup have a regular place alongside action figures in movie merch collections. On July 16, Scentbird announced a fragrance inspired by the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot. Traackr, a data influencer marketing platform, indicates the most popular film-inspired beauty line this year was Nyx Professional Makeup’s “A Minecraft Movie” collaboration.
Celebrity-founded brands in particular are making bigger inroads this summer. Paramount Pictures’ “Smurfs” has a Fenty Beauty collaboration highlighting founder Rihanna’s starring role as Smurfette (she also created an original theme song for the animated film). The Smurfette Collection, which has already hit shelves at Sephora and on the brand’s DTC site ahead of this weekend’s world premiere, includes a keychain lip gloss, pink mirror and flower-shaped glitter puff.
For brands fronted by the films’ stars, the promotion strategy is obvious, even if that involves dinosaur-themed skincare. The blockbuster press cycle is an opportunity to expose products to massive new audiences — and fans — with minimal market spend.
The Outset collaboration was gifted to a wide range of male consumers, and even reached Gen Alpha through an interview between Johansson and eight-year-old influencer Taylen Biggs; Fenty Beauty worked with another kidfluencer, Aliyah Xelia, to promote its cartoon-themed collection.
Not every summer blockbuster lead with a beauty label creates a full-blown collaboration — June’s “F1” had licensing deals with a range of fashion and beauty brands including IWC Schaffhausen, Shark Beauty and Tommy Hilfiger, but Brad Pitt’s Beau Domaine wasn’t shilling product. The skincare brand did receive some coverage in Variety’s shopping section when press attended the film’s screening.
But brands need to carefully calibrate their approach, and finding alignment between a blockbuster for mass audiences and beauty labels’ premium positioning can require some creative thinking.
Beauty and the Box Office
While the Barbie collab onslaught of 2023 may have opened the floodgates of movie merch, it was R.e.m. Beauty’s “Wicked” line that especially inspired celebrity founders and their movie studios’ licensing divisions, said Sulit.
Boosted by Grande and co-star Cynthia Erivo press tour for the film, which became a production in and of itself, the R.e.m. collaboration had the highest social engagement across Ulta Beauty’s “Wicked” collection, according to Traackr. Dash Hudson data showed that the brand’s engagement rate on TikTok nearly tied with Rhode after “Wicked” was released. R.e.m. Beauty’s Google Search peak was during the film’s release week.
“We had this built-in story,” said R.e.m. Beauty SVP of marketing Bryan Mochizuki, who said that Grande had the creative advantage of translating her role into beauty product ideas. The brand’s distinctive square palettes even made an appearance during the song “Popular.” Ulta Beauty sold out of the first product from the collection within one week of it being available online; inventory was expected to last for three months.
Beyond the creative inspiration, founders also bring studio backing to their beauty lines. Johansson promoted the “Jurassic World” collaboration on her press tour across New York, London, Berlin, South Korea and China, as Universal gifted the product to press and influencers at early screenings.
For “Smurfs”, Rihanna wore Fenty Beauty’s Smurfs lip products for the PG animated film’s premiere on July 13; her Dior-clad children joined her on the blue carpet.
Brands stand to gain cultural relevance from these movie-adjacent collaborations, but the hope is for repeat customers. Many of them, like The Outset, aren’t minting new products but repackaging their best-sellers for a new audience. New hits can emerge, though. Mochizuki said that R.e.m. Beauty integrated the special-edition Glinda Glow Drops and pH products into the core collection.
While no 2025 collaborations have reached “Barbie” or “Wicked” proportions yet when it comes to engagement, the box office is just warming up. “Smurfs” debuts July 18 in the US, while “Wicked: For Good” comes out in November.
Mochizuki declined to share any plans for the sequel, but “Wicked” and Grande fans on TikTok and Reddit are already obsessing over when a new R.e.m. collaboration will drop. Just this week, fans scrutinised a mysterious pink palette with what looks like blush shades peeking out of the corner of a selfie Grande posted to Instagram. The featured pattern looks distinctly similar to the eyeshadow palettes from the first collection — a preview, perhaps, of what’s to come.
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