The Strangest Character Posters of 2024

I’m not sure who created the now-pervasive practice of releasing six or eight or 40 character posters for every Hollywood movie. (Someone should figure that out and write a lengthy magazine profile on that person.) All I know is you can’t go to a multiplex these days without being inundated with countless posters for movies, many of them featuring actors you barely recognize playing characters you’ve never heard of before.

There must be extensive studies or focus-group reports out there that prove this is a good way to market a movie, or at least to get a boatload of extra coverage on film blogs. And in 2024, even with fewer big blockbusters as a result of 2023’s dual labor strikes in Hollywood, the practice showed so sign of slowing down. Even mid-level movies now sometimes get whole fleets of character posters. (You wouldn’t believe how many Nosferatu posters there were if I told you.)

All year, any time I visited movie theaters around New York City, I’ve kept a running list of the strangest examples; the ones with incredibly minor characters, or amusing photographs, or “Zendaya Is Meechee”-esque phrases. With 2025 almost upon us, it is time to unveil my list of the 20 strangest character posters of the year. I can’t wait to see what surprises the new movie year has in store for us. And please, whatever else you do, always remember: Dwayne Johnson is Callum Drift.