If Christmas Day already felt overbooked, ESPN and A24 just found a way to make it louder, weirder, and oddly musical. In a shared holiday promo for ESPN’s NBA Christmas Day slate and A24’s upcoming film Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet faces off against retired NBA star Metta World Peace in a table tennis showdown where the real star is not the celebrity pairing, but the sound design.
Directed by Julia Pitch of Greenpoint Pictures and created by ESPN Creative Studio, the spot transforms the rhythmic chaos of ping pong into a percussive take on “Carol of the Bells.” Paddle hits, ball strikes, shoe squeaks, and grunts gradually sync into a hypnotic, slightly unhinged holiday symphony. Pings become dings. Pongs become dongs. A choir swells. Tension builds. Chalamet wears a windbreaker and sport glasses like he means it. Watch below:
“I wanted the spot to tonally match the song’s hypnotic undertones, joyful spirit, and precision from the very beginning,” Pitch said. “The film is designed to create a sense of mystery. The song. The choir. The boom operator. Every beat became an opportunity for surprise.”
Behind The Scenes
The idea lives or dies on sound, which is why the brief was an immediate yes for Machine and senior sound designer and composer Michalis Anthis. Working closely with Pitch, editor Ben Schwaeber, and the ESPN team, the music structure was locked early and used to guide everything from the edit to the on-set performance. A Marty Supreme table tennis consultant was even present during filming to ensure every hit landed on beat.
The ambition was deceptively simple. Play the main melody of a Christmas classic using only the sounds of ping pong.
“We experimented with different parts of the composition and different phrases,” Anthis said to LBB Online. “The ambition was for the main theme to be played solely with ping pong hits. The challenge was melody recognition without the support of classical instrumentation.”
That meant recording every paddle hit, table strike, foot shuffle, fabric rustle, and grunt, loading them into a sampler, tuning and pitching them, and essentially turning the game itself into an instrument. Only after the melody landed did the team layer in choral elements, first supporting the theme, then branching into original composition.
“It took multiple rounds of tuning to get it right,” Anthis added. “Another challenge was how to fit the most recognised parts of this iconic song in such a short amount of time.”
The result is a spot that feels engineered and playful in equal measure, balancing ESPN’s sports spectacle with A24’s offbeat confidence. It also neatly caps Chalamet’s recent promotional tour, which has leaned heavily into self-aware performance and meme-ready moments.
As a Knicks fan, Chalamet has clearly enjoyed dragging table tennis into the NBA spotlight, and the spot lands its final beat with the actor’s now familiar refrain. This time, delivered by World Peace himself.
“Marty Supreme. In theatres Christmas Day.”
Ping. Pong. Bells. Checkmate.
CREDITS:
BRAND: A24, ESPN
AGENCY: ESPN Creative Studio
- Vice President: Carrie Brzezinski-Hsu, Jay Marrotte
- Creative Director: Jamie Overkamp, Justin Swiderski
- Writer: Derek Rosen, Talib Babb
- Director of Production: Kyle Wright
- Producer: Mike Prado, Amanda Remy
- Talent Manager: Stacey Pressman
- Strategy Manager: Hannah Whitten, Matias Weilmann
AGENCY/MEDIA PARTNER: Disney AdSales
- Vice President: Christina Carey Dunleavy
- Director: Katie Kornstein
- Manager: Alyssa Gomez, Tara Dundon
- Business Director: Akeem Thomas
- Account Executive: : Lauren Beeton
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Greenpoint Pictures
- Director: Julia Pitch
- Owner: Michael Kuhn
- Creative Director: Niles Roth
- Executive Producer: Tatiana Rudzinski, Victoria Vallas-Cullen, Meg Bailey
- Head of Production: Karen Berkowitz
- Line Producer: Lisa Brugliera
- Director of Photography: Xiaolong Liu
- Editor: Ben Schwaeber
MUSIC/SOUND: Machine
- Composer: Michalis Anthis
- Sound Designer: Michalis Anthis
- Executive Producer: Matej Oreskovic
- Audio Assistant: Francis Medina
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360 News. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on Twitter at @colinthewriter1
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