Michael Bay could be going from Transformers to toilets as Paramount makes plans to adapt the Skibidi series of viral YouTube videos.
If some recent quotes from Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman are anything to go by, Transformers and Armageddon director Michael Bay could be a couple of years away from making a movie about a series of YouTube videos about toilets.
First uploaded in February 2023, Skibidi Toilet quickly became the most watched videos on YouTube, launching an entire series of follow-up clips, fanmade games and assorted memes.
Speaking to Variety's Strictly Business podcast, Goodman said his studio is “in talks” with Skibidi Toilet creator Alexey Gerasimov, adding that Michael Bay is ‘working very closely’ with the 23 year-old on ideas for a potential film or TV show.
Said Goodman, “I will say that Michael and Jeffrey Beecroft, who’s his longtime production designer and a colleague of his that’s worked with him on all of his movies, have been working very closely with Alexey to really professionalise the kind of back engine of this, to make sure, if we ever decide to go film or television, that this is kind of lifted beyond just the resources that creators have on the internet.”
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The first Skibidi Toilet video lasted eleven seconds and depicted an animated human head emerging from a lavatory bowl. You might wonder how on earth that could form the basis of a film or TV series, though subsequent episodes gradually expanded in scope – later episodes depicted a full-scale war between the weird disembodied heads and a group of cyborgs dubbed cameraheads.
It’s possible to see more than a hint of Bayhem in the video below, for example:
The first Skibidi Toilet video has been watched 190 million times so far. Goodman thinks it could potentially form the basis for “the next Transformers or Marvel universe.”
We might go and have a lie down for a bit.
