Pizza Hut is getting into the movie delivery business. It already has the pizza part down pat, but now it wants to give customers something extra special in the form of a pizza box that doubles as a movie projector. It’s the ultimate combination of "dinner and a movie" you didn’t know you wanted.
According to The Verge, Pizza Hut enlisted the design aesthetic from Ogilvy Hong Kong, which bills itself as "one of the largest marketing and communication companies in the world," to create this revolutionary pizza box. How it works is pretty simple.
Customers order one of four distinct pizza boxes, each offering a different movie download through a scannable QR code. Horror fans will want to go for Slice Night, sci-fi buffs will gravitate towards Anchovy Armageddon, Hot & Ready is for the romantics, and Fully Loaded will tickle the fancy of action-movie aficionados. Though, you can probably use your Netflix or HBO Now app on your phone to stream other content. Once the box is delivered, you take out the lens that’s embedded in the pizza table, take out the circular cut-out on the front of the box and place the lens in the opening, use your smartphone to scan the code and download the movie, and then use the pizza table to prop up your phone inside the box. Its screen will then be projected onto a nearby wall for your screening pleasure. And the whole thing is called Blockbuster Box, which seems like an ode to the once great movie rental service that only recently closed all of its doors for good. I guess it should have considered adding pizza into the mix. Watch it in action in the video after the jump.
As of right now, this advertising stunt is only going on in China, which is a bummer for all of you in the States whipping out your iPhones in anticipation. But there are also some other obvious downfalls to this. For one, you have to stick your phone, even though propped up on a pizza table, inside the greasy pizza box, exposing it to slippery grease stains. Second, the picture quality of this DIY projector seems questionable. By the looks of the video above, it’s not all that impressive. And third, there’s the question of audio quality. It’ll be difficult hearing what’s happening in the movie when you’re straining to hear through the confines of the cardboard pizza box, though perhaps this is easily fixable if you have external speakers. Still, this is something we’ve never seen before, and curiosity outweighs these pitfalls.
The only thing we need right now is a roundtrip ticket to Hong Kong!
