There has never been a harder time to deliver a box office smash.

In just 10 years, UK film releases have grown 80% but screens to show them on have only grown 20%. Streaming platforms have aggressively bought up film content to premiere at home and 15 of the 21 sequels released in 2019 failed to match their prequel box office success.

With Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker launching just five days later, Sony Pictures tasked MG with the new Jumanji sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level launching before the cultural behemoth.

We had our work cut out.

With Star Wars hot on our heels, we needed a massive opening weekend.

The Jumanji franchise stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Kevin Hart. To say their fanbase is cult would be an understatement. The popularity of the stars and their natural chemistry is enjoyed by the 220 million social media fans across the globe.

In 2018, there was even an online campaign to make The Rock run for the 2020 US presidency.

They had social reach and engagement that, due to our small budget, we could only dream of. So, we realised, if we could get the stars into our solution – better still if we could get the stars to promote our solution – their organic reach would act as an accelerator for launch.

We would be foolish not to leverage this popularity, so placing Dwayne and Kevin at the centre of our creative solution became essential

We now just needed to find our big media moment.

Data from the previous film launch showed we lacked admissions from 16-34yrs.

This group makes or breaks a strong opening weekend, seeing more films in the first few days than any other group to gain social kudos in their peer group.

This group could supercharge early ticket sales and deliver the opening weekend we needed.

But 16-34yrs are the ‘Netflix Generation’. They actively avoid advertising, binge on boxsets and opt for transient media like TikTok, Instagram Stories and Snapchat.

We couldn’t risk an algorithm slowing the build of reach and buzz and missing our window – we needed an ‘OMFG!’ stunt to drive disproportionate fame in a short timeframe.

Enter live reality TV – the only media that 16-34yr olds consume more than any other demographic group. We could get them here at scale, instantly.

Reaching more 16-34yrs olds than Game of Thrones, we placed Jumanji: The Next Level at the epicentre of UK TV culture in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

We didn’t buy airtime, we became part of the show, using Hollywood stars, The Rock and Kevin Hart, and original from the set to create a live Jumanji “Dingo Dollar Challenge” within the editorial.

Both the film and the show feature the jungle and cryptic tasks, meaning this once-in-a-media-lifetime collaboration gave not only scale, but something more valuable: context. It couldn’t look less like the advertising our audience actively try to avoid.

Despite the UK having some of the strictest TV regulations in the world and negotiations lasting over a year, we ran the equivalent of an eight-minute film trailer, featuring the stars, the plot and the props, live in the biggest show live of the season.

• 2 million posts and mentions about the Challenge on I’m A Celebrity in 24hrs

• 20 million+ reach through PR coverage across biggest publishers in the UK: The Daily Mail, Capital FM, LADbible, The Daily Express and The Metro in 48hrs

• An opening weekend box-office of £9.5m – nearly 19% more than the previous Jumanji film

• UK accounted for 15.0% of the total global box office, 2.2% more than the 2017 film contributed

• Regression modelling identified a gap of £1.484m uplift in ticket sales that could only be attributed to the collaboration

Given it cost Sony Pictures £50k for a license and set-build, that is an incredible ROI of 29:1, an astonishing return on investment for a creative media idea.

• Additional box office revenue generated by activity: £1,484,000

• Cost of activity and implementation: £50,000

• Net box office revenue generated: £1,434,000

• ROI: 28.68