In Popcorn, each player manages their own movie theater and tries to show the best combination of movies in order to attract guests to their seats. The game plays out over nine rounds, and in each round you may acquire a new movie, build or upgrade your theater, and use advertising to attract new guests — then it's showtime, with you drawing guests at random from your bag to see who has shown up. Place guests in the right seats to activate special powers; match them with the right movies, and you get a movie bonus as well, thanks to their enthusiasm for your good taste. After watching films in your theater, guests might be spirited away to other theaters thanks to ads presented by those theater owners.