Neon Dares Audiences to Survive 36 Straight Hours of 'It Ends' for Cash
Neon will screen its debut feature It Ends on a 36-hour continuous loop at New York's Metro Private Cinema, paying audience members to stay for as much of it as they can handle. The stunt, timed to the film's 21 August release, runs from 7 pm ET on 21 August through 7 am ET on 23 August at the Chelsea venue founded by Alamo Drafthouse creator Tim League (Deadline).
At 87 minutes per cycle, the loop amounts to roughly 25 back-to-back screenings of the same film. The marketing event, branded "The Endless Screening: New York," turns endurance into a contest: four-person teams enter a Last Person Standing challenge and must remain inside the theatre for the full 36 hours, with designated breaks allowed.
The financial incentive scales with stamina. Each team member earns 25 cents for every minute they stay, capping at $540 per person. If every member of a group completes the entire marathon, each collects an additional $500 bonus. Participants also receive a $250 concession credit — alcohol excluded.
The contest is open to New York City residents aged 21 and over. To enter, groups of four must post a video of up to one minute on Instagram using the hashtag #ItEndsMarathonContest, explaining why they can go the distance. The entry deadline is 11:59 pm PT on 17 August.
Neon has also invited independent theatres elsewhere to partner on the promotion, leaving the door open for the marathon to spread beyond New York.
It Ends, directed by Alex Ullom, follows recent graduates who take a wrong turn onto an endless two-lane road and find themselves trapped inside a Jeep Cherokee as horrors close in around them. The film stars Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole, and had its world premiere at SXSW the prior year. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on 21 August, with a national expansion to follow.
Harkins Theatres lists the film as rated R with a run time of 1 hour 29 minutes (Harkins Theatres), consistent with Neon's own 87-minute figure.
The hook is almost too neat: a horror film about an endless road, screened on an endless loop, with cash dangled at anyone willing to ride it out. Neon is a distributor known for building attention-grabbing campaigns around its titles, and the endurance-contest format turns the opening-weekend marketing push into a spectator event of its own — one where the audience's stamina, not just the film's quality, becomes the story.
