Last week tremendous excitement swept over the world with the breaking news that a Skibidi Toilet movie was in production. Even more thrilling: director Michael Bay was rumored to be involved. Yes, the man behind Armageddon and Transformers would be bringing his unparalleled vision for destruction and spectacle to a grim war involving singing toilets.
Although all the reports – including the one here at The Beat – were a little bit light on actual evidence that Bay was directing the film…we wanted to believe. It felt so right for these times.
But alas, Bay seems to have flushed away the rumors in an Instagram post (embedded below because of formatting.0
While showing that his directing A-game applies just as much to hand-held phone selfies – dig those Dutch angles! – Bay also confronted the rumors head on:
I went on the internet last night and it says stuff about me directing something, I know what I’m directing, but it’s not the thing they keep talking about. That’s a movie [pointing to a script]. These are a whole bunch of movies right now [pointing to a pile of scripts], one is in serious prep, one is in soft prep, one I’m writing, one getting ready to produce or two to produce, but there’s not one in that little pile that says ‘Skibidi,’ so let’s just stop the lore right now. OK. You heard it from me.
While this SEEMS straightforward, actually it leaves so many questions unanswered. For one thing, Invisible Narratives, the “tra-digital” production company that is making the Skibidi Toilet movie has Bay as Chief Creative Adviser. So Bay is involved, just not directing.
News of the Bay-Skibidi connection go back a year to Variety and other trustworthy sources reported that Bay was involved. ‘Skibidi Toilet’ Film and TV Franchise in the Works From Michael Bay, Adam Goodman. There it is, all our hopes and dreams in one headline.
Bay himself fed the rumors of his direct involvement with a different instagram post that showed toilets….although I’ve been unable to find an actual link to it. Magical thinking?
Really, what this all shows me is that we need this film. A Gen X icon like Michael Bay teaming with a Gen Alpha north star like Skibidi Toilet would close the circle, reunite our destinies, make us sing as one.
If you still don’t know what Skibidi Toilet is, The Beat’s Justin Guerrero described it thusly:
As the story of each short continues, what starts as a surreal video of a game character’s head singing a remix from a toilet evolves into a story about these singing toilets taking over the world and a global war being waged against them.
Or just watch:
As noted, the first Skibidi videos – just funny singing heads in toilets – turn into images of relentless fighting involving the Heads in Toilets race fighting against the Cyborgs, who are heads on other machinery. They are dark, nihilistic, devoid of context and hypnotizing. (For old timers, they remind me of Aeon Flux.) They probably have a lot of Michael Bay’s actual filmography in their DNA, since he brought digitized mayhem to new levels in his work.
There are a lot of ley lines connecting many things:
• Roblox game versions of Skibidi have been hugely popular with one called Skibidi Toilet Tycoon being played 87 million times.
• Skibidi Toilet skins were introduced into Minecraft.
• The Minecraft movie has been a massive worldwide hit, surprising some observers while showing that kids might still like going to movies in theaters.
• The first episode of The Studio, a comedy starring Seth Rogen which is must watching among Hollywood and IP types, is based on the absurdity of making movies based on iconic brands (in this case Kool-Aid), and was filmed a full year before A Minecraft Movie sent everyone scrambling for more iconic brands to turn into movies.
So you see, it’s all connected. I want to believe. Call me a Toilet Truther, but I believe in the Michael Bay Skibidi Toilet movie.
Heartbreaking news for who? I’m hoping this never gets made.