‘Backrooms’ Sends Hollywood Running to Reddit for New Ideas

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/reddit-backrooms-hollywood-ip-1236622594/

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We’re about to see a new flood of Hollywood slop as they yet again fail to realize what actually makes good indie films good

Al and three actors who had large opening weekends?


We? Speak for yourself. I’m not going to lay eyes on any of it.



Reddit, you say…

But who is this 4chan!?

Legend has it they’re an elite hacker also known as “anonymous”




After the success of the Barbie movie, studios were allegedly scrambling to figure out what other toys they could make a movie about. They just don’t get it.

There is a movie being made about Monopoly of all things.

I think I read there are two concurrent Monopoly movies in the works. Here: https://deadline.com/2026/06/monopoly-movie-lionsgate-developing-two-new-takes-1236954940/




Mining Reddit for movie ideas… I guess we can all look forward to a high-budget adaptation of Swamps of Dagobah.


Patrick H Wiilems had an interesting video essay recently about the death of music videos, since there was a major pipeline from being a music video director to being a movie director.

This may be the first year where Hollywood starts treating YouTube video makers as a substitute pipeline for finding new talent.

I am genuinely excited for this.



I think it’s safe to say, they will never learn or unlock anything of value.

They have thousands of scripts to choose from and they go for Reddit they can as well just skip the middleman and ask a LLM directly.

Claude, give me a Hollywood movie script that wins at least 3 oscars.



The original Onion story was about the success of American Pie kicking off a wave of copycat pie-fucking grossout comedies from the other studios.


Maybe try letting filmmakers rather than C-suite make the films?

Art is a financial risk. Wide and shallow appeal sells tickets

Only true for so long, and nowadays people can barely afford gas and food and rent so just watch Tiktok rather than pay to see films.




Can’t wait for the “Green Text” film where the tagline describes how fake and gay it is.


The rule34 movie is going to be quite something.


Which will turn into llm models giving them ideas, as reddit is ruled by bots and slop and will only get worse as they kick off real users that actually drive engagement for organized interests pushing a campaign.


Somehow, the CMO of Reddit seems like an even worse person than I had imagined. I can honestly say he has an extremely punchable face just from reading his quotes.

They hired him from Meta. And he looks like it.



I want a 3 hour epic about the poop knife.

You mean Pulp Fiction? That’s what was in the briefcase.



If it ends the marvel movies and sequel bullshit, I call it a victory.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Can we not wait for Blair witch 3.0 for another shakeup this time?


The Cylinder: A Motion Picture

Trapped in an M&Ms container

Surrounded by butter

Low on microwaved banana




If that means more originals and less lazy remakes, I’m all for it!

Threes studios control like 75% of the movies now after the paramount deal closes, sony controls another like 7% or something.

It’s going to get worse not better, and using reddit for ideas is basically using llm’s and organized inerests, be they commercial or fascist or what have you, to generate ideas.


Let’s just input it into the AI Slop machine a few times first. Then strip out anything that might hurt us or some share holders reputation or feelings. Shove some ad’s and got to go for some good ol patriotism. Don’t forget to photoshop the current thing of the month “We” are caring about into it.

Looks like we just found Paramount’s new deputy head of sucking at making movies you are hired! /s

The future fucking sucks.

I will gladly take on this honor and burden of the people. I do ask that I’m paid my comically large bag of money up front.




If some weirdo manages to make an adaptation of Mother Horse Eyes I’ll be the happiest man on earth



Did they ran out of classic fairy tales to put in modern day American cities?


Did you guys hear that the director is only 20 years old?


“I’m sick of this motherfucking /r/Art Mod on this motherfucking subreddit!”


Comments from other communities

Hollywood will do anything to avoid actually paying writers to come up with original ideas.

AI didn’t work, time to scrape reddit manually for royalty free ideas.

Which will probably also be AI generated content



God forbid they take a risk on a story they like that isn’t already a best seller

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not like writers don’t have original ideas; i’m certain they have plenty of them. It’s just that the producers are too terrified to take a risk on an original idea (that they have to pay for).

But, apparently, they’re not too afraid to steal original ideas from the Internet. Fucking chickenshit motherfuckers…

Of course, it’s all about the fucking money

Writers in general have original ideas, but Hollywood filters them out. Hollywood selects for boot-licking and ass-kissing. Anyone with thoughts of their own washes out early.


It also doesn’t help that >90% of content is crap, no matter the medium. It’s a risky investment.

That being said, the way to handle those odds is to make a lot of smaller bets and listen to feedback. Once you average everything out, you can get good returns on investment




It’s the most psychotic method to finding movies. Now that the backrooms has worked, Hollywood execs can put it in their pitch deck for the next reddit inspired movie.

It’s the same reason why we’ve only got superhero movies for two decades, even beyond Marvel. You can only make new IPs if the reason for producing the IP is that it’s similar enough to an existing one. Which kind of kills the whole idea of fresh ideas.



Greentext short film compilation incoming


SCP movie incoming.

I think that’s impossible to monetize due to the licensing rights or something of the SCP wiki

See things like Control that are blatantly SCP inspired but don’t use the name

And “There is no anti-memetics division”, which is just a sanitized version of qntm’s original story on the wiki.



True, but that can be worked out as well.



What is SCP?

It’s a collaborative writing project that, just like the backrooms, originated in 4chan. It’s a wiki about a fictional secret government organization (The SCP foundation) that contains anomalies to protect normalcy.

It has become huge over the years. Definitely check it out if you enjoy scifi and/or (Lovecraftian)horror.




Good luck finding anything new of value in the endless ocean of fake LLM engagement, industrial scale astroturfing and outrage farming. I can see Influencer Reacts To Made Up Stories From r/amITheAsshole: The Movie as the best possible outcome.


One Reddit user says “kill yourself.”

Suicide - coming soon


What about AI? Wasn’t it the FUTURE of cinema??? Come on! I want more generated garbage on my screens!

Do not go for creative ideas from humans, ugh. Double down on the bet, create 5 different AIs that discuss a new idea among themselves!!


/r/writingprompts: The Movie


Dear hollywood please please please go to /r/badmovieideas


To be completely honest I’ve seen some not terrible ideas in some comment threads on Reddit over the years.

Some of those couldn’t be worse than some of the crap Hollywood has been producing.

I don’t believe there’s a shortage of new ideas in the industry, writers are creative. Producers however are the actual problem: they’re the ones refusing to pony up the money to make anything other that dross.


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Home Alone remake but Kevin is still Mcauley Caulkin as an adult and nobody seems to notice he’s a grown man.

Just remake the first movie with as much of the original cast as you can.



Farm boy, fill these with water.

A NI MAL

The princess would be Ms piggy and Kermit would be the dread pirate Roberts/Westly

You are absolutely right! I just thought as-you-wish/an-ni-mal/i-love-you would be a funny gag.

  • Sweetums is the giant for sure.

  • Is Rizzo right for Vizini, or should he be human?

  • And for Inigo, Gonzo? He’s got the arms for fun rapier work; I think we saw some is treasure island. Inigo Gonzales?

  • The six fingered man is probably a token human.

  • The prince could be human too, or maybe Fozzy.

  • Miracle max… Pepe the prawn? There is probably a better fit out there.

  • OMG! Bunsen and Beaker working on the life sucking machine!

But How do you safely puppet Sweetums in a holocaust cloak, in a wheelbarrow, on fire… 🤔 There will be no survivors…

Honestly, if they had a real person who could pass as Andre the Giant he should be the token human in the cast





I just talked about that a couple days ago




There’s still hope for a Darth Binks movie yet!


Still waiting on Rome, Sweet Rome.

This sounds like a live-action version of “GATE: and so the JWST Fought”




Eww, gross. Run to the artists, not a platform, instead.

If they can find a way to credit the person behind the account, I’ve read some good stories and comments on reddit. Why would they not be artists? Because of the media they communicated through?

There’s plenty on r/HFY that’s good. Would love to see something like Chrysalis as a film

FYI, it’s a Reddit link. Sorry, but it’s a good story




Crazy. If they can drum that up from reddit, I can certainly try to revive my energy to contribute a modicum to the communities I started here.


Tbh I didn’t think the movie was that good. I wanted more exploring and a slow drip of horror. Instead they skipped all the parts I would have been interested in. Like Clark exploring and discovering everything instead they just info dumped it all in the kitchen table scene.


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