All I Wanted
Was the Poster
Three Months. Twelve Cinemas. One Marty Supreme Poster.
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Three Months. Twelve Cinemas. One Marty Supreme Poster.
I should start before Marty Supreme. Because the story didn't begin with a poster. It began with a screen. Long before London, there was Almaty.
I was a cinema fan before I moved to London. The screens just got bigger when I moved. I've been watching Timothée Chalamet since before I graduated from high school (2017).
By March 2026, I had logged 99 films on Letterboxd. Marty Supreme pinned. 100 is reserved for the Drama.
"It wasn't just a film to me. It was personal."
Marty Supreme and London Tube
26 December 2025. First watch.
Five days later — New Year's Eve, December 31 — I was back. Everyman The Whiteley this time.
You have to understand where I come from to understand why a table tennis movie hit me the way it did.
I'm from Kazakhstan. I studied at KIMEP University in Almaty, where table tennis isn't just a club sport — it's varsity. It's serious. YES, it is BIG in Asia.
Marty travels to Japan — pursuing the sport, pursuing dreams. I know that journey. I've made my own version of it. Moving to London.
And then there's the Sphere. Not the one in Vegas. I'm talking about the Nur Alem sphere from Expo 2017 in Astana, the one I saw every day during uni days in Astana, the one that looks like it could be a giant table tennis ball sitting on the Kazakh steppe.
Gold Medal, Winter Olympics
Dune BTW
UCL, Arsenal Match in London
Winner, Australia Open
I went to my friends (If you're still in Tokyo — please go). On Telegram, I messaged: (Please get me the poster). The poster hunt had gone international. A Kazakh in London, messaging Kazakhs in Tokyo, trying to collect Marty Supreme memorabilia from Japan.
When I watched Marty Supreme, I saw my culture. The obsession, the precision, the refusal to give up.
The ask was simple. Cinemas get promotional posters from distributors. They hang them in the lobby for the run of the film. When the film leaves, the posters come down. They get thrown away, recycled, or — if a staff member fancies it — taken home.
I didn't want to steal one. I didn't want a reprint from the web. I wanted an actual cinema poster, the one that had hung on the wall while real audiences walked past it on their way to see the film. A piece of the experience. Physical. Real.
I wanted to put it on the wall above my bed. That's it. That's the whole ask.
MARTY SUPREME NO OTHER CHOICE. There really was no other choice.
SO CLOSE YET SO FAR
Five Odeon cinemas. The same answer dressed up in five different ways: not my problem. I don't blame Odeon — not really. They're a massive chain. Poster requests probably aren't in anyone's job description. The staff were polite. The system just wasn't built for someone who cared this much about a piece of promotional cardboard. But Odeon wasn't the only place I tried. Garden Cinema. Rich Mix. Vue. Curzon. Everyman. Picturehouse. I reached out to the Barbican, left my name and number, scribbled contact details on scraps of paper, handed them to box office staff. I wrote emails. I made calls. I left notes.
There comes a moment in every quest when a reasonable person would give up. I am not, it turns out, a reasonable person. At Everyman, I stood in front of their “Dream Big: Tell Us Your 2026 Resolutions” display.
I wrote down my goals for 2026 on one of those sticky notes. My resolution was already clear. It had been clear since Boxing Day. After the film, I'd started wanting the poster — not as a souvenir, but as a daily reminder.
A reminder on the wall above my bed that everything is possible. DREAM BIG.
That's what I intended to do.
Everyman Cinema, 26 December, 2025. Standing in front of the Marty Supreme DREAM BIG display.
I printed a campaign for Odeon (specifically). P.S. I wasn't joking. But I was also absolutely. Joking.
I even created a sticker — the most accurate portrait of my emotional state.
There's a photo I took of my bedroom. Above the bed: nothing. A blank white wall. A rectangle of emptiness where a Marty Supreme poster should be.
While I was fighting my war against cinema bureaucracy, the awards season was unfolding exactly as anyone who'd seen Marty Supreme knew it would. It started at the Golden Globes. Chalamet won. I made a WhatsApp sticker of Timmy holding the Globe and sent it to my friend Jaya. Here, it was enough to convince her to continue our graduation.
Yes, I even graduated from uni in between running around London.
And then came the Oscars. Nine Academy Award nominations...
Good luck, Timmy. Good luck at the Oscars.
You deserve it. You deserve it because you made me believe that Marty's obsession was noble.
That caring too much about something isn't weakness — it's the whole point.
And then... after three months, twelve cinemas, a PowerPoint presentation, a term sheet, a legally drafted contract, a campaign dossier, and more bus and tube journeys across London than I care to count — it happened.
Not at Odeon. Not at Everyman. Not at the Barbican. At Prince Charles Cinema.
The weight of three months of persistence finally, physically, in my grip.
It's up now. Not yet above my bed (building a frame), and then it should be where it was always supposed to go.
It's just a poster. I know that. Odeon's contract said its value was nil, and they were wrong.
But it's not about the value. It's about the quest. It's about caring deeply about something that everyone else thinks is trivial and refusing to stop until you get it.
The poster's on the wall. The wall is complete.
That's what Timothée did with Marty's journey. That's what Josh does with cinema. That's what A24 does with every film they touch.
Thank you to all people who made this story and journey possible! To everyone I met along the way, to every worker of the cinema theatre, to London.
Good luck, Timmy. Get that Oscar.
Always Dream Big
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