As the sum total of all current human creativity conveniently dumped in a single place—albeit one that’s then had an algorithmic inversion blender jammed in its skull to make sure things get nice and scrambled—the internet has developed its own language, art, and culture over its last three decades of endlessly chaotic existence. And since there’s nothing Hollywood loves more than coming across something unique, then trying to render it down into a little scoop of life-giving intellectual property, an increasing amount of that creativity has found itself getting sucked into studio films, like this summer’s began-life-as-a-creepypasta horror movie Backrooms.
In some ways, this recent uptick in online scavenging by the studios serves as a natural development of some very old paths to the mainstream. Where young, underfunded, and outré artists once worked the animation festival circuit, or made furtively distributed short films, or published odd little stories in sci-fi mags, they now do that maturation process online, for god and everybody (i.e., A24) to see. The result is an increasingly fluid pipeline for ideas that began as blogs, animated shorts, webcomics—not for nothing, but Warner Bros. just announced a brand new deal to make animated films based on South Korea’s ridiculously popular Webtoon platform—YouTube videos, social media threads, and other online phenomena to become actual feature films. (It’s also been happening for longer than you might think, with the first ‘net-derived projects arriving just a few years into the start of the 21st century.) And so we shout it, with a mixture of horror, fascination, and delight: It came from the internet!
Julie & Julia (2009)
Where did it start?Salon.com, which just turned 30 Where did it end up? Julie Powell’s adventures in French cooking moved from a blog to a memoir before becoming a frothy, somewhat biographical dramedy starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in 2009. Screenwriter Nora Ephron also drew from Child’s own autobiography, My Life In France, but Julie & Juliastill holds the distinction of being the first major motion picture to be based in part on a blog, an honor which the late Powell no doubt held dearer than learning that the real-life Julia Child saw her food journaling as a “stunt.” The internet reclaimed Powell’s writing in 2022, when she wrote a series of articles for Salon about the Food Network’s Julia Child Food Challenge. [Danette Chavez]
Undercover Brother (2002)
Where did it start? As a web cartoon created by future Oscar winner John Ridley Where did it end up? As an only slightly less cartoonish live-action feature with a screenplay by Ridley and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me co-writer Michael McCullers. McCullers’ CV hints at what Universal might have wanted to get out of Undercover Brother: Its own high-concept hit lampooning a bygone cinematic genre, this time mingling sexy spy escapades with 1970s blaxploitation. Eddie Griffin adopts the afro and bell bottoms of his animated predecessor, a man out of time recruited to stop the nefarious, white-supermacist agenda of The Man, aided by fellow operatives with similarly descriptive codenames: Smart Brother, Conspiracy Brother, Sistah Girl, and so on. Undercover Brother didn’t become an Austin Powers-level phenomenon, but it did earn the animated series a proper DVD release, and eventually spawned a 2019 direct-to-video sequel. (In that film, the title role is inherited by the star of a better-remembered blaxploitation spoof: Black Dynamite’s Michael Jai White.) [Erik Adams]
Fred: The Movie (2010)
Where did it start? YouTube Where did it end up? Nickelodeon, then theaters, then Nickelodeon, and, eventually, TikTok. Though it seemed like the kind of early YouTube ephemera designed to annoy parents (see also: The Annoying Orange) Lucas Cruikshank’s early Fred videos are also pretty macabre. “Fred Loses His Meds,” a video Cruikshank filmed and uploaded in 2008 when he was 14, is about exactly what it sounds like, plus references to Fred’s dysfunctional and likely abusive home life played for dark laughs. The videos cleaned up pretty quickly, especially as Nickelodeon came knocking, putting the character in an episode of iCarly in 2009 and giving Cruikshank a trilogy of movies and a TV show. But without the darkness, Fred really was just an annoying voice, and Cruikshank more or less retired the character by 2014, save for a few pandemic-era TikToks. [Drew Gillis]
Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever (2013)
Where did it start? Reddit Where did it end up? Lifetime. One of the early faces of memes, Grumpy Cat broke containment the way memes used to: as a le epicly updooted photo on /r/pics. The late, great Grumpy (real name: Tardar Sauce) had feline dwarfism and a severe underbite, giving the frowning feline a unique disapproving glower. She was also recognizable enough to dip her paws in monetization. After appearing in the internet cat documentary Lil Bub & Friendz, Grumpy landed her own Lifetime Christmas movie starring Aubrey Plaza. Parks & Recreation‘s in-house moody millennial was the voice netizens already ascribed to Grumpy, making Plaza the only choice for a movie that The A.V. Club called “the largest turd in Lifetime’s crap crown of original programming.”Worst Christmas Ever is your standard made-for-TV holiday slop punctuated by cynical tidings from Plaza over shots of Grumpy sleeping. Monetizing memes is a tricky business, but for Grumpy, it was easy money. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Slender Man (2018)
Where did it start? Something Awful Where did it end up? All over the place, ranging from webseries to video games to movies both directly and indirectly inspired by the malleable, white-faced, Reservoir Dogs-dressed boogeyman who always happens to be right behind you. Not only did The Slender Man appear in his own terrible movie in 2018 (partially exploiting the real-life attempted murder of a child by two Slender Man-pilled kids), but also in a different terrible film based on Marble Hornets, which is kind of like what the Backrooms YouTube series is to the original Backrooms image. Slender Man was everywhere for a few years thanks to the simplicity of his design and the flexibility of his horror—just look to Enderman, Thinman, The Crooked Man, The Tall Man, The Bye Bye Man, and whatever the hell Mercy Black was to see his influence. [Jacob Oller]
Mister America (2019)
Where did it start? The On Cinema podcast Where did it end up? In movie theaters. Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s On Cinema At The Cinema is the type of project that can only be born of the internet, an ever-expanding, format-hopping soap opera that’s closer to pro wrestling than Tim And Eric Awesome Show. In its journey from podcast to webseries to Adult Swim’s website to Heidecker’s streamer HEI, the series took a detour to cinemas with 2019’s Mister America. Set after “Trial Of Tim Heidecker,” which documented the fallout of the “Desert Sun Music Festival,” during which Heidecker poisoned 20 concertgoers with noxious vape juice, Mister America is a mockumentary about his incompetent and vindictive campaign for San Bernardino District Attorney to exact revenge against the trial’s prosecutor. Mister America sits neatly among more than a dozen seasons of On Cinema, Oscar specials, spin-offs and direct-to-DVD shorts, and Popcorn Classics. The internet is fueled by in-jokes, and Mister America is one of the more elaborate ones ever told. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Zola (2020)
Where did it start? Twitter Where did it end up? Sundance! Y’all wanna hear a story? Back in 2015, it felt like the whole internet could actually focus on the same thing for up to a couple of days at a time. One of these was the 148-tweet thread from stripper Aziah Wells, which, within a few months, was in development as a film with Dave Franco attached to direct. He ultimately didn’t, but the viral story still ended up with a very zeitgeist-y cast and creative team. Co-written by Euphoria‘s Jeremy O. Harris and Atlanta‘s Janicza Bravo and directed by the latter, the A24 film starred Taylour Paige, Riley Keogh, Colman Domingo, and Nicholas Braun—basically, a ton of names you’d expect to find in an A24 film. The online origins and the cool factor of the team may have been a decent hook, but Zola actually stands on its own as a movie, in no small part because Wells’ story really was that wild. [Drew Gillis]
Grimcutty (2022)
Where did it start? WhatsApp Where did it end up? On Hulu, which is like the internet, but pricier. Inspired by a viral challenge that may or may not have actually caused harm to kids around the world—whether the creepy “Mother Bird” sculpture created by Japanese artist Keisuke Aiso and the online messages that used it to bully folks had any real effect is still the subject of debate—Grimcutty attempted to interweave moral panic and monster movie. The results at least involve a weird goblin face that gives Momo a run for its money, but the rest feels too parent-focused to capture the uneasiness of social media run wild. [Jacob Oller]
Skinamarink (2023)
Where did it start? YouTube Where did it end up? Filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball turned Heck, the short film that he posted on his channel Bitesized Nightmares, into one of the least likely box office hits of 2023. The experimental, still, and subtle horror about a pair of siblings who wake up in the middle of the night to find that something is a little wrong with their house (the windows and doors are disappearing) lured in curious moviegoers and lulled some of them to sleep. The others paid rapt attention to the curiously understated art piece, especially when it hit Shudder and allowed them to immerse themselves with headphones into Ball’s quiet, atmospheric, utterly haunted bad dream. [Jacob Oller]
Dear David (2023)
Where did it start? Twitter Where did it end up? Lionsgate+. After the warm reception of Zola, it’s not hard to imagine that BuzzFeed Studios expected to pull off the same feat—crafting, documenting, and promoting viral moments was BuzzFeed’s 2010s bread and butter, after all. In 2018, the studio announced plans to adapt the viral 2017 “Dear David” Twitter thread by illustrator and former BuzzFeed writer Adam Ellis into a feature film. Unfortunately, neither the film nor the thread it was based on were anywhere near as memorable as Zola. (To add insult to injury, Ellis later revealed he wasn’t paid a dime for the movie, since BuzzFeed owned his output while he was working there.) Where Zola was a tawdry tale of trafficking and murder, Dear David‘s thread is a fairly run-of-the-mill ghost story, which was then fashioned into a fairly run-of-the-mill low-budget horror flick. Like BuzzFeed has memes, we already have plenty of those at home. [Drew Gillis]
Nimona (2023)
Where did it start? Tumblr! Where did it end up? Right back on the internet, courtesy of Disney fumbling a long-awaited film adaptation of ND Stevenson’s celebrated webcomic-turned-graphic-novel. The Mouse’s loss was Netflix’s gain, with the streamer scoring a Best Animated Feature nomination for Nick Bruno and Troy Quane’s take on a shapeshifting malcontent with ambitions toward sidekickhood, and the reluctant villain she enthusiastically adopts. The film version of Nimona loses the sketchy linework that helped make Stevenson’s comic an online sensation, but maintains its blend of chaotic mischief and heartfelt emotion; the result embodies the energy, if not the look, of a scrappy online underdog made good. [William Hughes]
A Woman Called Mother (2025)
Where did it start? Twitter Where did it end up? Inspired by a creepy thread on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Randolph Zaini’s Indonesian horror movie A Woman Called Mother mixes in a little bit of Goodnight Mommy, a little bit of Cronenberg, a little bit of the occult, and a little bit of Evil Dead Rise for good measure. Two years after a heartbreaking divorce, Yanti (Artika Sari Devi) looks like she’s gotten her groove back: buying a new house and keeping busy at her salon. But when her daughter Vira (Aurora Ribero) returns, not everything is as it seems, and she notices her mother is acting strange to her and her younger brother, Dino (Ali Fikry). Since this is a horror movie, things get quite strange (and bloody) as the siblings must figure out what’s really happened to their mother. The movie isn’t out officially in the States, but it made its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2025. [Monica Castillo]
Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (2025)
Where did it start? As an independently distributed web series Where did it end up? Not the Rivoli, that’s for sure. Since 2007, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s single-minded pursuit of performing on the Toronto stage that launched The Kids In The Hall has been the basis of the online mockumentary Nirvana The Band Show, its Viceland follow-up Nirvanna The Band The Show (note the extra “n,” lawyers for the estate of Kurt Cobain), and the big-screen comedy Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. The premise has proven so durable because it’s really a Trojan horse from which Tony director Johnson and musical savant McCarrol launch various “I can’t believe they got that on camera” stunts and copyright-flouting parodies—storylines all powered by their fictionalized alter egos’ oddly endearing codependent friendship, which was locked in from Nirvanna The Band’s earliest online videos. And since Matt and Jay still haven’t booked their dream gig, there’s always the chance they can carry this nearly 20-year-old bit into another decade and another medium. They’ll just have to find a way to top Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie’s surprisingly elaborate Back To The Future homage. [Erik Adams]
Keep scrolling for more great stories.