LOS ANGELES:

Twentieth Century Fox has bought the first takeover of Snapchat’s Lenses for “X-Men: Apocalypse” — and in another first, fans can purchase advance tickets directly from the studio’s video ads for the movie on Snapchat.

For 24 hours on May 23, Snapchat users in the US will be able to transform themselves into nine different characters from the Fox sci-fi pic via Snapchat Lenses, and then send photos or videos to friends or post them to their Story timelines in the app. The movie hits theaters on Friday, May 27, at the start of the Memorial Day weekend.

In addition, Fox and Snapchat have teamed for the first movieticketing ad unit on the service, in a campaign running from May 13 through May 26 in the US Snapchat users who see the “X-Men: Apocalpyse” video ad can swipe up to purchase tickets from either Fandango or MovieTickets.com. The ads are running across multiple channels in the Snapchat Discover section, including People, BuzzFeed, Food Network, Vox, Vice and the Wall Street Journal. (RTRS)