GermanyBMW is using the infotainment screens of cars it has already sold to promote a film. Starting the car brings up a banner for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” on the central display; tapping it opens a full-screen animation with music and a light show run through the cabin’s ambient lighting. The clip does not play on its own, and the banner can be ignored.
In 2023 the company said the opposite. Asked then about advertising on car displays, BMW described the cabin as the owner’s private space and said it would not sell that space.
The campaign runs from 27 July to 10 August 2026 in more than 70 countries. It reaches compatible cars built after July 2020 running Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9 or X, which covers most of BMW’s connected fleet rather than a narrow slice of new models.
Owners on Reddit split over it. One group read a full-screen movie promo delivered to a car they paid for as advertising, and as a precedent for whatever comes next. Another treated it as an optional easter egg that costs nothing to dismiss.
BMW’s framing is neither: the company calls it part of a partnership with Sony Pictures, in which the iX3 and the 5 Series appear in the film. Whether more tie-ins follow, and whether the banner format gets reused for anything less cinematic, BMW has not said.
