20th Century Fox Teams with Domino’s to Launch “Cinematic Pizza Universe”
Domino’s fans rejoice! ExtravaganZZa Feast, Stuffed Cheesy Bread, Chocolate Lava Crunch Cake, and more of your favorite fresh-baked characters are coming soon to a movie screen near you.
Shared movie universes built around major brands such as Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and Underwhelming White Hunk have dominated the global box office for years. So it’s no surprise that everybody who’s anybody is desperately scrambling to snag their own hot slice of the gooey movie-house cross-over pie.
Fox, in particular, has enjoyed great success with their forty-seven big budget sequels, prequels, and parallequels to 2000’s X-Men. But judging by the somewhat disappointing box office receipts for their latest entry, X-Men: Blue Man’s Bad Plan, some believe audiences crave something a little fresher, a little hotter, and a little… cheesier?
The top brass at Fox clearly agree with some. Because they’ve officially inked a deal with Domino’s Pizza to create what highly-paid development executives are calling a “Cinematic Pizza Universe.”
The first phase of this new shared universe will consist of fourteen feature-length films slated for release over the next ten years, each focusing on a different beloved Domino’s property, culminating in a mouth-watering three-part finale where the full menu of heroes will join forces against the most dastardly villain the Domino’s Universe has ever known — The Noid.
Kicking off the ambitious decade-long lineup is “Cheese vs. Pepperoni: Birth of Crust,” a two hundred million dollar adventure yarn that promises to reveal the adrenaline-soaked origins of Earth’s two most popular pizza toppings and explore the profound philosophical beliefs that threaten to tear their alliance asunder. It’s rumored Jon Hamm, Rob Lowe, and Jason Alexander are on the short list to provide the voice of CG character “Cheese, a greasy mama’s boy with a hard body, a soft brain, and more jokes than a clown on payday.” Meanwhile, Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, and Meryl Streep are duking it out for the prosthetic-heavy role of “Pepperoni, a disgraced scientist with a pepper-mustache and a fanatic devotion to militant fascism.”
Said one Fox executive, “This deal has been in the works for years. Getting a major movie studio and one of the biggest pizza companies on Earth to agree on anything is no easy task. Took us ten months just to figure out whether or not the films’ food-based heroes would ever be eaten on screen. They won’t. But they will have faces and eat smaller versions of themselves. So, all in all, everyone is very excited.”
But while Domino’s fanatics (or “Domi-Bros” as they prefer to be called) are all but guaranteed to dress up as their favorite menu item, line up months in advance, buy multiple tickets to every screening, and accuse unimpressed film critics of harboring a sinister bias against films based on a pizza restaurant, wider audience appeal remains a question mark.
“That’s the biggest challenge,” according to celebrated marketing supervisor, Jimmy Coolfinger. “How do we capture the eyeballs of general audiences? The people who, back when they were kids, messin’ about on the playground, never pretended to be mushrooms and bell peppers fightin’ for their special spot on the pie. The kids who didn’t feel compelled to memorize every ingredient in Domino’s iconic pizza dough. The ones who drifted off to dreamland clutching a stuffed animal instead of a crispy thin crust ham and olive pizza folded in half. If we can figure out a way to crack that DaVinci code, we’ll all be wiping our ass with golden pyramids.”
So what are Fox and Domino’s doing to ensure their Cinematic Pizza Universe’s appeal extends beyond its core audience? Everything they can. Hundreds of high-profile licensing deals have already been closed, including a Cheese vs. Pepperoni mobile game, a true crime podcast based on the infamous Pizza Oven Killer, lovingly crafted 1:5 scale replicas of Domino’s Pizzas that smell like real fresh-baked pizza when you submerge them in cold water, a full line of Domino’s-themed hockey equipment, and a genetically-engineered, eight-foot-tall “Pizza-Golem” scheduled to lumber through promotional events leading up to the official premiere, then promptly die on the red carpet.
But whether you’re a hardcore Domi-Bro or someone who’s never eaten a single slice of pizza in their entire life and never will no matter what anybody says, rest assured, the full slate of Cinematic Pizza Universe films has something for everyone:
- Cheese vs. Pepperoni: Birth of Crust
- The Supreme: All-In
- Stuffed Cheesy Bread and The Kingdom of the Mozzarella Skull
- Pepperoni & Sausage: Meat Me in Paris
- ExtravaganZZa Feast: The Ultimate Delivery
- The Lost Diary of Chocolate Lava Crunch Cake
- Bad Breadsticks: Running Late
- The Dough Babies in Diaper Danger
- Stuffed Cheesy Bread vs. The Dough Babies: Taste of Blood
- Crumb Bum’s Stupid Day Off
- Pizza Tracker, P.I.
- Robust Inspired Tomato Sauce Sex Odyssey
- Chocolate Lava Crunch Cake vs. Robust Inspired Tomato Sauce
- The Dippin’ Sauce Gang: Gettin’ Greasy in Vatican City
- The Domino’s Menu: Noid Wars: Part One: Crimson Dawn
- The Domino’s Menu: Noid Wars: Part Two: Noid Unleashed
- The Domino’s Menu: Noid Wars: Part Three: Avoid No More
Excited yet? Let us know in the comments!