Michael Bay is going from Optimus Prime to Armitage Shanks as Skibidi Toilet goes into production. It’s a film based on a series of viral YouTube videos.
In a move that would make a superb episode of Hollywood satire The Studio, director Michael Bay has officially gone into production on Skibidi Toilet. This is the planned adaptation of a series of viral YouTube videos which first began to emerge in 2023. Initially depicting a staring head rising out of a toilet bowl, the animated shorts have gradually grown in scope as viewing have shot into the stratosphere. The videos have notched up over 35bn views, we’re told.
Word of a film adaptation first bubbled up from the pan in July 2024, but it’s since been announced that Skibidi Toilet has officially gone into production. Media company Invisible Narratives, partly owned by Bay himself, has put out a press release confirming that the convenience-based film is in its early stages of development.
Per that release, Bay will direct, and has assembled a talented team to help make the film, including A Quiet Place production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, and VFX supervisor Rob Legato, who’s won three Oscars for his work on such films as Titanic, Hugo and The Jungle Book. Both have history with Bay; Beecroft worked on two Transformers movies, while Legato was the visual effects supervisor on Bad Boys II and 2022’s Ambulance.
Read more: Michael Bay denies killing a pigeon
Invisible Narratives will produce, develop and finance the film (per Cartoon Brew), based on Georgia-based animator Alexey Gerasimov’s surreal output. It hasn’t been disclosed whether it’ll be live-action, animated or some combination of the two, but given Michael Bay’s appetite for destruction, it’s likely he’ll gravitate towards the YouTube series’ more expansive episodes, which depict a war between disembodied heads and various types of cyborg.
The film will bring “Bay’s signature visual intensity to one of the internet’s most unlikely breakout IPs,” we’re told. Whatever the plan is, Skibidi Toilet is likely to be a couple of years away at least.
More on Michael Bay’s Royal Doulton odyssey as it comes in.
