From viewers to co-creators: How AI is changing movie marketing

In recent years, fan engagement in sports has transformed from passive viewership into immersive participation. Sports leagues now deploy AI-driven highlight reels and live virtual interactions let fans feel like coaches or teammates. That same idea is now entering the world of movie marketing. Film promotion is no longer just about trailers, posters or red-carpet appearances. It’s evolving into interactive narratives where audiences don’t just consume content. They co-create, explore, and play inside it. At the forefront of this shift is a new wave of platforms aiming to turn fandom into experience.

One such innovator is Akash Mamidi, whose journey has converged on a simple yet ambitious question: what if movies could be more than 2-D stories into worlds you could step into? In his vision, the next generation of film marketing will be less about broadcasting and more about building personalized, participatory journeys around the intellectual property audiences already care about.

When Akash Mamidi first started thinking about his next big idea, film marketing wasn’t even on the radar. “I grew up in Vijayawada,” he told us, admitting that films were never far away though. “If you throw a rock in Vijayawada, you’ll probably hit a movie buff.”

Movies, he says, were the cultural heartbeat of his hometown. “Growing up I used to watch a lot of movies because it was the only source of entertainment.” But it wasn’t until years later—after studying at Stanford and building startups since the age of 13—that Mamidi began to see the storytelling power of cinema as a foundation for something new.

Like many entrepreneurs, his vision came out of a personal moment of reflection. “During a rough patch in my life, the things that gave me a sense of relief, a sense of hope, a sense of excitement or joy were my favorite movies that I’d already watched, or movies that I was excited about that were coming out.” That realization planted the seed for Oncemore, a fast-growing platform aiming to redefine how audiences engage with the films they love.

“Growing up, movies were very close to me,” Mamidi says. “I felt that all over the world people cared a lot about their favorite IP, whether it be music, sports, or movie characters.” But he noticed a gap: the relationship between fans and their favorite stories had grown one-dimensional. “The audience craves more meaningful interactions than just watching or rewatching things,” he says. “If a new movie is coming out, the movie’s only for three hours, but I am spending another 20 hours on it—looking at the interviews, rewatching the trailer, doing breakdowns.”

That craving, he realized, wasn’t being met by traditional film promotion cycles. “Giving interviews or just doing the same sorts of promotional activities or even that same sort of fan relation. The world has obviously changed a lot and there’s a lot more we could do with the tech we have,” he says. “How could we create a platform where we enable more meaningful interactions with people’s favorite IP?”

The result is Oncemore, a digital playground built to make fandom participatory. Mamidi envisions it as a kind of “digital Disneyland” where each experience is custom-built around the user and the movie they love. “Imagine a world where there are custom-built rides made for you based on the movie,” he says.

The company’s first major partnership is a collaboration with the upcoming Telugu blockbuster They Call Him OG, starring megastar Pawan Kalyan, and it shows what that vision looks like in action. Kalyan, who also serves as the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, has announced that OG will be one of his final acting roles, creating immense buzz across India’s film world.

“People are very excited and they want to do something about the movie, but there’s no way for them to actually engage with it, other than just watching trailers,” Mamidi explains. “At Oncemore, they have the chance to participate in a journey of three mini first-person shooter games with a Samurai training backdrop, just like the Japanese theme of the movie.”

To make the virtual world as authentic as possible, the film’s creative team even provided Oncemore with a prequel comic book. Fans play through the game to unlock points and digital collectibles. “It’s a way for fans to unlock their own content,” he says. “As a result, they feel they have greater ownership over the movie.” Each participant receives a digital collectible card emblazoned with their name and the film’s title design: a small but symbolic piece of cinematic identity.

The choice of OG was strategic. “We just wanted to start off with as big a film as we could possibly find,” Mamidi says. “We’re trying to be in as big a partnership as possible.” That groundwork paid off when OG’s director, Sujeeth, embraced the idea. “The director was very excited by it as it was a great way to engage with fans and also make them part of the movie.”

If the early numbers are any indication, Mamidi’s hunch was right. Within just 42 hours of launch, Oncemore surpassed one million registered users, setting a global record that even eclipsed ChatGPT’s own adoption pace. According to the Times of India, it reached that milestone three days faster than OpenAI’s viral AI platform.

With another major pan-Indian film partnership on the horizon, Mamidi is already thinking about how to deepen personalization through AI. “We have a lot of scope for AI-powered experiences,” he says. “The next time we launch a comic book, we can introduce the fans themselves as one of the characters in the comic book. You just have to take a picture of yourself, or we use your profile picture, so that it’s more personalized to you.”

That personalized storytelling is, in Mamidi’s eyes, where the future of film marketing lies. “Existing platforms like YouTube are very static and they’re very rigid,” he says. “AI is going to shape new experiences in two ways. One is, you can create new sorts of personalized experiences. And secondly, these experiences will be created much more easily as time keeps going on.”

For Mamidi, Oncemore isn’t just a startup, it’s an experiment in emotional connection. In a world where streaming and social media have flattened fandom into views and likes, he’s betting on something deeper: participation. If Oncemore’s early success is any sign, the next generation of film marketing might look less like a billboard and more like a world you can step inside.