Overview and Goal

Popcorn is a bag-building game for 2 to 4 players. You each manage a movie theater and want to show the best movies to satisfy Guests, and also gain as much Popcorn as possible.

The game plays over around 9 rounds, each with 3 phases. In turn order, you may buy a movie, build a theater, and attract new Guests. Then, simultaneously, welcome your customers and seat them in your theaters. Optimize their seats to take the best actions, which will let you improve your cinema, influence your Guests, grow your audience, and gain money and Popcorn.

You begin the game with a movie, a bag with 5 white guests, 1 guest of each other colour, and an additional guest matching your start movie's colour. 1 guest of each other colour also begin on your exit space. A total of 14 guests.

At the end of the last round, the player with the most Popcorn wins the game!

Gameplay Overview

A round plays over 3 phases: Buying and Advertising, Showings, then End of Round. Play begins with the player with the First Player marker, then continues clockwise.

Phase 1: Buying and Advertising In this phase, each player takes a turn. On your turn, you may take these actions in any order (all these actions are optional):

• Buy a movie (Maximum 1 time per turn): Immediately place the movie on one of your theatres, sending the previous movie to your archive. If you place the movie in a matching theatre (1, 2, or 3 seats) you will immediately gain the bonus shown. Movies from the Top Row cost an extra $2 to purchase, you immediately gain a guest of the matching color from the reserve (or an Exit Zone) exactly like using Advertising tokens.
• Buy a theater (Maximum 1 time per turn) Note: You cannot take this action on your first turn.
• Activate Advertising tokens: Take one guest of the matching color from the reserve, and put it directly in your bag. If there are no guests of that color in the reserve, you may instead take one from any player's Exit Zone. If it's a "White in Bag" advertising token, you instead place a white guest from the reserve into any opponent bag. Alternately, you can simply take the token back to your supply worth no effect. Tokens can be left on the board from turn to turn, if you do not want the effect of them immediately. Note that you only have 3 Advertising tokens. If all of them are already in play, you ignore any actions that would let you play more advertising tokens.

Phase 2: Showings

• Open Cinema

Draw as many Guests from your bag as the number shown by the cube on your audience track at the bottom of your Cinema board

• Place Guests

After drawing your Guests, place them in your theaters as follows:

• You may only place Guests in theaters that are showing a movie.
• In each theater, place Guests in seat order (#1, then #2, etc.). You do not have to fill a theater before seating Guests in a different one.
• If you draw more Guests than there are available seats in your theaters showing a movie, place the extra Guests in the exit zone of your cinema.

Note: You may place a Guest on a seat of any color, but it’s better to place them on gray seats or those of their color, and also in theaters with movies of their color. Once all Guests are placed, continue to Seat and Movie Actions.

Phase 3: Seat and Movie Actions Now is when you may activate your Guests. Move from theater to theater, in any order you choose. You must activate all Guests in a single theater, in ascending order of their seats, before moving to any other theater. When you activate a Guest, they do the following in order: 1. Take 1 Seat action, if possible. 2. Take 1 Movie action, if possible. 3. Move to the exit. Note: You are never required to take an action.

End of Round

Theatrical Run

Move your Lobby sliders 1 space up on each of your Movie cards, covering 1 more action in each of your theaters. These actions will no longer be available in future rounds. You may continue showing a movie in your cinema even if it no longer has available actions. You may still place Guests in its theater to take Seat actions.

End of Game

The final round is the round in which the Final Showing card is revealed in the Movies deck.

Position in Deck

2 players = 10 cards below it

3&4 players = 5 cards below it

Scoring

• Popcorn you gained during the game.
• 1 Popcorn for every $5 you have.
• The player(s) with the highest total costing 3 theaters gain(s) the first Theater trophy (5 Popcorn with 3 or 4 players, 3 Popcorn with 2 players). With 3 or 4 players, if there is not a tie for first place, the second highest gains the second Theater trophy (3 Popcorn).
• Gain the corresponding Popcorn from Award cards.

You can treat remaining Advertising tokens toward Award cards! The color of the 5 color advertising needs to be chosen. The "White to bag" can be used to remove one of your white guests.

In case of a tie between 2 or more players, the one with the fewest archived movies wins. If there is still a tie, tied players share the victory.