No, you aren’t hallucinating from overexposure to Internet brainrot. Yes, you read that headline correctly: Inexplicably viral jangling-keys meme Skibidi Toilet is being optioned for a movie by none other than Transformers mastermind Michael Bay.
It hasn’t even been a year and a half since Georgian YouTuber Alexey Gerasimov uploaded the very first Skibidi Toilet video, but in that time it’s become a ubiquitous pop culture phenomenon and a testament to the power of the Internet to foster overnight superstars. There are Skibidi Toilet Fortnite maps, Roblox games, Infinite Craft recipes, and more knockoff merch and low-budget, quick-turnaround horror games than I have time to even vaguely get into here. Now, if Bay gets his way, Skibidi Toilet’s next step (metaphorically; toilets don’t have legs) could be onto the big screen.
Bay and former Paramount boss Adam Goodman are developing the Skibidi Toilet property into a television series, per Variety, with “the earliest conversations” also taking place for a full-on feature film adaptation. Goodman even insisted Skibidi Toilet “could be the next ‘Transformers’ or could be a Marvel universe.”
On the surface, it doesn’t quite compute. It’s plain to see most of Skibidi Toilet’s appeal is in its brevity and its absurdity, with each bite-sized episode featuring ever more ludicrous escalations in the war between the Skibidi Toilets themselves and a mysterious corps of camera-headed soldiers. This is to say nothing of its production value, or rather lack thereof. Episodes are animated in Valve’s free Source Filmmaker software using Valve-created assets from Half-Life 2, meaning any direct translation of the characters as they appear in the source material to an adaptation would likely run into significant legal barriers.
That hasn’t seemed to dissuade Bay and Goodman, however, who are picturing a hybrid animated/live-action project apparently in the same vein as John Wick. With Skibidi Toilet rapidly having emerged as the maniacally grinning face of Gen Alpha internet culture, one has to wonder what Hollywood will snap up next. Garten of BanBan limited series about dealing with PTSD? Roblox movie to compete with Jack Black’s Minecraft? Genshin Impact anime? Wait—they’re already doing that one.
As for Gerasimov, one certainly can’t blame him for chasing that bag—for a 23-year-old from Eastern Europe, this is the opportunity of a lifetime… even if it means the rest of us are inevitably going to be treated to The Rock’s head sticking out of a toilet down the line.
