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HQ Trivia has Walt Disney-themed trivia game tonight — here's what you need to know

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HQ Trivia is a live trivia game for cash prizes, created by two co-creators of Vine.
HQ Trivia

On Thursday night, the popular live trivia game app HQ Trivia will test your knowledge of Walt Disney movies. For movie fans who grew up watching "Dumbo" on repeat, or who know all of the words to "Hakuna Matata" (from "The Lion King") by heart, this special edition of HQ Trivia could be a chance to cash in on that Disney movie knowledge.

The game show app first teased its "Disney Trivia Night" with a tweet on Monday that announced the special edition of HQ Trivia will take place on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET. The tweet features an 11-second animation that combines HQ's logo with a classic Walt Disney Pictures logo.

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HQ and Disney have not divulged how much cash will be offered in prizes for Thursday night's game, but the Disney-themed trivia edition is still generating more buzz for the already popular app, with more than 13,600 views of the Instagram post announcing the special edition.

But, this isn't the first time that a major brand name has teamed up with the game show app for a special sponsored edition of HQ. The app, which launched in August 2017, landed its first official sponsors in March after quickly building a large following. HQ started regularly attracting over a million daily players in January, and the game saw a record 2.3 million players for just one game in March.

Here are the major brands that have sponsored past editions of HQ:

Target

On Monday, retail giant Target sponsored an edition of HQ Trivia that featured the app's biggest-ever individual prize. One player walked away with $100,000 in a one-winner-take-all version of the game that took place during Monday night's Emmy Awards. (In the past, larger prize pools have been split among several winners, though HQ had given away $50,000 in previous winner-take-all events.)

National Geographic

In August, National Geographic sponsored a $10,000 prize for a special HQ Trivia edition that focused on questions about national parks, such as Yellowstone.

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Nickelodeon

In June, Viacom-owned cable channel Nickelodeon sponsored an edition of HQ Trivia to promote the return of its kids game show "Double Dare." The special edition of HQ gave away $50,000 to one player as well as the opportunity to appear on an episode of "Double Dare" in the future.

Toon Blast

Earlier in June, another popular mobile app sponsored multiple editions of HQ Trivia during the NBA Finals. The HQ competitions were presented by Peak Games' puzzle game app Toon Blast, which offered big prize pools that grew and grew through each game of the NBA Finals series between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. Game 1 of the Finals saw an HQ edition that offered $100,000, while HQ and Toon Blast promised to increase the prize pool by $100,000 with each game of the series.

The Warriors ended up sweeping Cleveland in just four games, however, which meant the prize total only reached $400,000 on June 8. Still, that remains the record prize for a single game of HQ months later.

NBC's 'The Voice'

The NBC singing competition TV series "The Voice" partnered with HQ in May to promote the show's season finale. The special edition game, which was co-hosted by "Voice" coaches Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton, offered a $50,000 cash prize and a trip for two to Los Angeles to attend the TV show's live season finale.

Nike

In March, sports apparel giant Nike teamed up with HQ Trivia to sponsor a special edition of the game show promoting the brand and its Air Max sneakers. In that game, four winners split a $100,000 prize and they each also walked off with free pairs of limited edition HQ-themed Nike Air Max 270 sneakers.

Warner Bros.

Also in March, the Warner Bros. movie studio signed a sponsorship deal with HQ Trivia worth a reported $3 million, AdAge reported at the time. That partnership resulted in HQ Trivia hosting special editions promoting Warner Bros. films like "Rampage" (with actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson guest-hosting along with Scott Ragowsky) and "Ready Player One" earlier this year. In August, HQ also ran a 15-second video ad for the Warner Bros. movie "The Meg."

The edition of HQ featuring Johnson offered a total of $300,000 in prize money in April, which was a record at the time for HQ (83 winners walked away with over $3,600 apiece).

This 25-year-old guessed 80% of his HQ Trivia questions — and won over $20,000
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This 25-year-old guessed 80% of his HQ Trivia questions — and won over $20,000

Other brands have taken an even less subtle approach to marketing themselves by teaming up with HQ Trivia. In addition to Warner Bros. showing a 15-second video ad for "The Meg," other companies such as Chase, Google and MillerCoors have also chosen to simply run ads on the app ahead of a game, AdAge reported.

Clearly, plenty of big-name brands are happy to line up to sponsor HQ games in order to reach the mobile app's decidedly young users — with Disney just being the latest. (In February, a survey by research group CivicScience found that the majority of HQ's players were between the ages of 13 and 24 years old.)

However, HQ's popularity may have hit a plateau this summer, with Variety reporting the number of people downloading the app each month dipped to 560,000 in July, from over 2 million in February. But, HQ Trivia CEO Rus Yusupov (a co-founder of Vine) said in August that the company is looking at new gaming formats and platforms to keep growing its audience. Last month, HQ launched its app on Apple TV to reach more traditional TV viewers, and the company announced a new game, called HQ Words, this week. Debuting in October, the game features word puzzles similar to the game show "Wheel of Fortune."

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Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are both owned by NBCUniversal.

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