Because of the film’s opening weekend success, Roadside is now likely delaying the planned VOD date and expanding into more theaters — as many as 1,800 on its second weekend. Another factoid: “Buddy” had the biggest opening for any movie opening on 1,800 screens or less in 2026. It opened on just 1,277, giving it a stellar $4,331 per-screen average. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” which flopped at the box office, opened to just $7.7 million on 3,330 screens.
So, how the hell does this happen? It all starts with Casper Kelly, who developed a following thanks to “Too Many Cooks” on Adult Swim. “There were tons of people like, ‘Oh my God, ‘Too Many Cooks.’ I’m there. I’m there. I’m there.’ I think that helped it spread, and then it went way beyond the ‘Too Many Cooks’ people,” Cohen said.
That’s when it took off. “We had 20 million views each of the first two trailers, three teasers,” Cohen said. “We never did a full trailer. We did three teasers very deliberately because we wanted to intrigue people about the world of the movie.”
Indeed, there was never a traditional full trailer for “Buddy.” Instead, a series of teasers leaned on the imagery, particularly the titular Buddy the Unicorn. That worked. Roadside has 25,000 people in the Buddy Fan Club who signed up via text and can be marketed to directly. In total, the movie has around 500,000 followers on various platforms.
In terms of traditional marketing, it was all about reaching the intended audience — namely, younger, hungry horror fans. That meant meeting them where they are: online. “In the pre-pandemic era, you were advertising on both linear television and online,” Cohen pointed out. “This movie had no linear television [marketing] and the audience was under 35.”
