EDINBURGH \u2014 TikTok\u2019s reach into theatrical film marketing was part of the closing industry panel at this year\u2019s Edinburgh International Film Festival. At the \u2018Woman With a Movie Account,\u2019 TikTok U.K.\u2019s public figures lead Beatrice Mustocea opened: \u201cThese guys have a track record of democratizing fandom and turning that into a career.\u201d The panel consisted of film content creators Meg Hughes, Indigo Stafford, and Jamilo Mohamed (j_watches).<\/p>\n
\u201cI see people going to the cinema because of recommendations I\u2019ve given,\u201d Irish creator and aspiring director Meg Hughes told\u00a0Variety\u00a0after the event. \u201cI don\u2019t just tell people they should see it in cinemas; I explain why that film deserves to be seen there.\u201d For Hughes, TikTok is not just a stepping stone to filmmaking, but a potential tool for preservation: \u201cIf you can get that passion, if you can utilize creators like myself who want to keep this industry thriving and booming and growing and glowing, and seeing cinemas staying open.\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Numbers partially back her up. A TikTok-commissioned U.S. survey of 446 users found that 73% who discovered a film on the app went on to watch a trailer, 42% looked up showtimes, and 36% bought a ticket. A TikTok-commissioned LiveRamp meta-analysis of 34 U.K. film campaigns found an average box office lift of +23.5% for films with TikTok ad exposure, along with a +21.2% uplift in incremental audience reach. While striking, these figures reflect platform-driven campaigns rather than the organic creator efforts exemplified by Hughes.<\/p>\n Authenticity, Hughes argued, is what drives trust, \u201cIf your film is a certain genre, find the creator who matches what the film represents. Don\u2019t just go for someone with numbers.\u201d She pointed to how comedian Eva Victor, whose feature \u201cSorry, Baby\u201d played the festival out of comp, has used TikTok to shape a creative voice, and how Ryan Coogler\u2019s aspect-ratio explainers drew millions of views: \u201cPossibly the way forward is more of that, opening up the conversation: hey, this is how we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n Fellow panelists echoed the point. Journalist-turned-creator Indigo Stafford noted how TikTok audiences wanted contextual decoding of Netflix\u2019s \u201cAdolescence.\u201d Jamilo Mohamed described her enduring chick-flick fandom videos as proof that conversational engagement, not disposable virality, keeps fans coming back.<\/p>\n What exhibitors and studios still lack causal data on is whether this enthusiasm consistently converts to ticket sales, but that is true of most marketing campaigns. For now, niche film creators getting millions of views offer Hollywood a double promise: they can speak with authenticity to their audiences, and have confidence those audiences may indeed step into cinemas. Whether that promise holds at scale remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EDINBURGH \u2014 TikTok\u2019s reach into theatrical film marketing was part of the closing industry panel at this year\u2019s Edinburgh International Film Festival. At the \u2018Woman With a Movie Account,\u2019 TikTok U.K.\u2019s public figures lead Beatrice Mustocea opened: \u201cThese guys have a track record of democratizing fandom and turning that into a career.\u201d The panel consisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1972393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[351282,351284,346780,351280,351283,351281,351279,22488],"class_list":["post-1972392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-beatrice-mustocea","tag-content-creators","tag-edinburgh-international-film-festival","tag-indigo-stafford","tag-industry-panel","tag-jamilo-mohamed","tag-meg-hughes","tag-tiktok"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/TikTok-Creators-Court-Film-Fans-But-Can-They-Drive-Audiences.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1972393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}