Double duty: How a filmmaking company made a Super Bowl ad while shooting a feature film

Film producer Andrew Panay is currently shooting Somedays, a feature film about an unusual friendship between a delivery driver and a teenage girl starring Billy Bob Thornton, Pamela Anderson, and Ariana Greenblatt. At the same time—and sometimes on the same set—he also hammered out the details for a Super Bowl commercial for T-Mobile.

Panay, who produced films like Wedding Crashers and Hulu’s Swiped, is the founder of Panay Films, a film production company and brand agency that frequently works at the intersection of Hollywood and brand marketing. After previously partnering with T-Mobile, Panay Films teamed up with the brand for T-Mobile’s 13th consecutive year in the Big Game on an ad that Panay described as “off the hook.”

In the 60-second spot, which will air in the second quarter of the game, the Backstreet Boys surprise a group of real T-Mobile customers at its Times Square store with an impromptu brand-ified performance of “I Want It That Way,” during which they croon about the benefits of T-Mobile. Actor and comedian Druski, who was recently named T-Mobile’s “chief switching officer,” appears in the spot overcome by emotion, while mgk (fka Machine Gun Kelly) gets the short end of the BSB Army-wielded stick, showing up to perform to an empty room after the crowd follows the Backstreet Boys into Times Square and beyond.

It’s not every day that filmmakers work with multigenerational talent like the Backstreet Boys, and Panay, who at this point is a Super Bowl advertising veteran, said creating the ad itself was an exercise in risk-taking.

“This is shot like, we’re either getting it or we’re not,” Panay told Marketing Brew. “And I ain’t getting the Backstreet Boys again out in the middle of nowhere.”

Two in one

While T-Mobile’s ad wasn’t shot on the same set as Somedays, Panay said he was writing and ideating on the ad between feature film shoots, which was made easier seeing as Somedays director Brian Klugman also serves as Panay Films’s head of creative. According to Panay, moving between film and ad projects quickly is an approach he’s spent 14 years getting comfortable with.

“Why are we so fluid? Why are we so fast? Well, we’ve been doing it a long time,” Panay said. “I’m not going to tell you that I had some sort of great idea. It just happened.”

Panay Films got its start in the ad world when it met with Microsoft about some Hollywood-style projects and landed on a dance-forward campaign tied to the launch of the Microsoft Surface tablet with Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked director Jon M. Chu. Since then, Panay Films has honed its creative agency skills alongside its filmmaking, working with brands like Samsung and Google, ADT, and Josh Cellars.

This year’s T-Mobile’s Super Bowl spot has some of that early performance and dance energy of the Microsoft ad from more than a decade ago. Panay described the experience as “basically like shooting a live Broadway play,” thanks to the performers involved and obstacles ranging from Times Square filming permits to snow blanketing the New York area, which condensed filming from a several-days schedule into just one. Plus, Panay said the T-Mobile customers who played an onscreen audience weren’t told about the impromptu Backstreet Boys performance, giving it all an authentic element.

“We just go nuts. We go outside into Times Square,” Panay said. “It was the night before a storm, 15 degrees out, it was as cold as the end of days, and we had a blast.”

Doing it live

Panay Films has averaged two to three Super Bowl ads a year for the last 14 years, but Panay said he’s never done a BIg Game ad at the same time as a feature film. Ultimately, he said, he thinks the projects are better for it.

”Like a football player who sits in the pocket…You’re seeing the field. Everything almost slows down a little bit, because you’re in such a creative overdrive,” Panay said. “I think filmmakers sometimes do better under pressure.”

There’s also the enduring power of the Backstreet Boys, who have been celebrating their 1999 hit album Millennium with a residency at the Las Vegas Sphere called “Into the Millennium.” Panay saw the boy band perform somewhat recently, and he said he helped convince T-Mobile’s team that "I Want It That Way" was the right song to use back in August.

“These guys have been on top for 33 years. They’ve been doing it. They sell out,” Panay said. “But this is a whole ’nother level of phenomenon.”