Why Supercell blended Hollywood with TikTok to launch ‘Squad Busters’

Supercell’s five mobile games have 220 million monthly active players and more than 6 billion lifetime downloads combined. But facing stagnant growth, the Finnish game developer knew it had to go big to launch its first new release in five years.



Enter Squad Busters , a 10-person multiplayer mobile game in which players build up squads over four-minute rounds and compete to grab the most gems. The new game features characters from across the Supercell universe and is designed to appeal to both casual players and hard-core gamers.



It launched this week with an epic five-minute ad starring Chris Hemsworth, Christina Ricci, Ken Jeong, Will Arnett, and Moana ’s Auli‘i Cravalho as game characters following around a random gamer.









The Hollywood stars eventually face off against another gang of characters that includes TikTok superstar Bella Poarch, lip-synching legend Gabriela Moura, and YouTuber ZHC as Chicken. There’s also a brief appearance by Dude With Sign .



A big, celebrity-filled swing for our collective engagement makes sense when you consider the headwinds faced by both Supercell and the gaming industry as a whole . The company’s revenues were down 4.2% in 2023 from a year earlier, and CEO Ilkka Paananen has acknowledged the challenges of competing for our attention not only against other games but also against Netflix and TikTok.



Hollywood vs. Influencers



Rob Lowe, who heads up marketing for Squad Busters , says that since each of Supercell’s previous five games have been billion-dollar hits, the company wanted to have a collection of stars in its launch spot to resonate with young and old players alike and grab attention across a variety of audiences. Hemsworth’s Viking, for example, will appeal to anyone who loved him as Fat Thor in Avengers: Endgame or as warlord Dementus in the newly released Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga .



“We’d seen from our play tests and user research that Squad Busters has a strong cross-generational appeal, so we knew our core creative needed to speak to a broad audience,” Lowe says. “With that in mind, we took that audience-spanning view when thinking how the core creative might be structured. This led us to the idea of blending Hollywood names with some of the biggest stars on TikTok and Instagram.”



[Image: Uncommon/Supercell]



The company worked with creative agency Uncommon and director Jody Hill ( Eastbound & Down , The Righteous Gemstones ) to create the new ad. Nils Leonard, Uncommon’s cofounder and chief creative officer, says the goal was to make something that was more than just another ad, but something of true cultural merit. “The casting strategy was an exercise in ambition,” Leonard says. “How can we mirror and elevate these iconic characters in a way that will reach new audiences—but more than that, speak to the launch of this game as a moment.”



Anticipation has been high for Squad Busters , with more than 40 million players preregistering to play before launch. The reasoning behind the five-minute short was to use it as a marquee ad that could be adapted for social platforms. Lowe says the spot was designed to work as both one piece and as a series of shorter vignettes. There are more than 50 different cuts and edits from that original five-minute spot, optimized for a wide variety of platforms and audiences.



No word yet whether all 50 cuts will get that damn Nickelback song stuck in your head.