A’Ziah King was known to her family and friends by the nickname “Zola” and to patrons of a Detroit nightclub as one of the more successful strippers on staff. But over one day in October 2015, King gained coast-to-coast exposure thanks to a dizzying series of 148 tweets that described, in real time, the wild, unpredictable and frightening scenario she found herself in with three strangers who seemed friendly. At first.
What began as a business trip to Florida, initiated by a fellow stripper she had only just met, turned out to be a plot to coerce her into prostitution through extortion and threats, one that spiraled into a life-or-death situation. King documented the ordeal tweet by tweet, and they were later compiled into an article by journalist David Kushner in Rolling Stone titled “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted.” Five years later, “the real story behind the greatest stripper saga ever tweeted” was adapted for the big screen as the crime comedy “Zola.”
The 148 tweets, the magazine article and in-depth interviews with King herself served as the building blocks for director Janicza Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris as they reconstructed the events that led the heroine, played by Taylour Paige, to a chance encounter with an overly friendly stripper named Stefani, played by Riley Keough, who suggested she join her in making big money at a strip club in Florida. The trip with Stefani’s naive boyfriend Derrek, played by Nicholas Braun, and a shady figure known as X, played by Colman Domingo, quickly goes wrong, and the business opportunity is revealed to be a kidnapping scheme involving genuine danger. Throughout the light, free-flowing film, the sounds of Zola’s tweets are heard as she reports the events in real time. Between one sex scene and another violent encounter, Derrek finds an escapist break in comic “Jackass” videos he watches on YouTube. “One day I’m gonna make funny movies like that,” he promises.
“Zola,” which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival on the eve of the COVID pandemic, was acquired for distribution by A24 and grossed about $5 million in theaters after its release in the summer of 2021. It may not be a masterpiece or an artistic breakthrough, but “Zola,” whose central figure was involved in producing it, can be seen as a milestone in the meeting point between Hollywood, its veteran cinematic heritage and internet culture. Derrek’s dream of making movies online has become routine for many content creators on YouTube and social media. And some of them have even been given the chance to realize a more ambitious dream: moving their work from the computer screen to the big screen.
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From online to the big screen; from ‘Obsession,’ ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Bring Her Back’
(Photo: Courtesy of Red Cape, Forum Film and Tulip Entertainment)
Take Kane Parsons, for example, who is just 20. As an ambitious high school student, he independently wrote, directed and produced a web series called “Backrooms.” With no financial resources and through simple cinematic tricks of the found-footage variety, the series gained momentum on YouTube. The talented, crafty teenager did not even need to write a particularly deep, original or brilliant script. Yet with modest means, he stirred the imagination of many users through the mysterious mazes he presented, spaces that bring together real-world environments and enigmatic alternate worlds. Since the first episode was released in 2022, the web series has racked up tens of millions of views, with one episode approaching 80 million, and today, four years later, the “Backrooms” YouTube channel has more than 3 million subscribers. At A24, the same production company that embraced “Zola,” executives spotted the potential in the content Parsons had created and its organic resonance among users, and decided to invest in adapting it for the big screen.
The full-length film adaptation opened in theaters. Unlike the web series, which relied mostly on concept and atmosphere, the young Parsons was required to build a coherent plot and write a script, like the grown-ups do. The young creator, clearly influenced by Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” tells in his horror-infused science fiction work the story of a furniture store owner struggling with mental illness who finds himself in a mysterious enclave between imagination and reality, and gets lost there. His psychiatrist sets out to find him and is pulled into the same dangerous alternate universe. The production budget was capped at just $10 million, and it can be assumed that most of it went toward casting Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett and rising Norwegian star Renate Reinsve. Those are unavoidable star castings, but A24 is relying mainly on the gimmick as a revenue generator. The low production values are not supposed to hurt the hype. They may even boost it. And the studio has something to lean on, based on the precedent set by brothers Michael and Danny Philippou.
Michael and Danny Philippou came from Adelaide, Australia, to the center stage of American independent cinema thanks to the internet. For years, the brothers created comic videos across various genres, most of them violent and in the style of “Jackass,” which they released to the public through YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms via their RackaRacka channel. One video, “Harry Potter VS Star Wars” from 2014, in which the two play a Jedi knight and a Hogwarts wizard locked in a mighty battle, went viral with 7 million views in a week, and 35 million to date. The huge success caught the attention of local production companies, which nurtured their outrageous, madcap stunts. One of them, particularly extreme, landed Michael in legal trouble in December 2019, when stunned police officers arrested him while he was driving a car flooded with water.
In retrospect, the trouble was worth it. The video may have generated “only” 1.8 million views, but it added to the brothers’ hype. As a result, the two received a rare opportunity to direct a horror film of their own. After “Talk to Me” screened at Sundance in 2023, A24 acquired the U.S. distribution rights and was rewarded with more than $48 million in American box office revenue, more than 10 times the film’s production budget. Worldwide, it grossed about $92 million. The box office success pushed A24 to back another Philippou brothers production, this time with a larger budget of $15 million and a significant casting coup in Sally Hawkins. But the profit share from “Bring Her Back,” released last year, was considerably smaller, with just over $19 million in the United States and nearly $40 million worldwide. The investment paid off, but the hype faded significantly.
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From ‘Bring Her Back’
(Photo: Courtesy of Forum Film)
The Philippou brothers, like Derrek in “Zola,” broke through with humorous YouTube videos. But to enter the cinematic arena, a turn toward horror appears to be required. That is the clear and unequivocal conclusion that emerges from the experience of YouTubers who have made the leap to the big screen. The same is true of Curry Barker, just 26, who cultivated an online audience through web sketches under the name that’s a bad idea. But his success as a filmmaker came only recently with the horror thriller “Obsession,” which he wrote and directed and which has become a much-discussed box office hit gaining momentum since its release. The star-free film follows an introverted young man who supernaturally manipulates a young woman he desires, then gets entangled. The film cost less than $1 million to make, but its revenues now stand at more than $100 million, to the delight of Universal, which acquired its distribution rights after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
It is not that no one is trying to break free of the genre constraints of horror. Tim Savage, for instance, brought the fictional internet personality Skweezy Jibbs into the world. The wild and amusing character, whom he played himself, earned Savage nearly 1 million followers, and with their support he managed to raise enough money to shoot a mockumentary comedy centered on Skweezy. Unfortunately, the 2025 film “Skweezy Jibbs Makes a Movie” failed to take off. Humor, even when pushed to the limit, does not go beyond that limit in the way, for example, Chris Stuckmann’s 2024 supernatural horror thriller “Shelby Oaks” did. Its production budget stood at just over $1 million, and the film generated eight times that for the online creator, whose YouTube film review channel has more than 2 million subscribers and nearly 800 million total views.
The same is true of Mark Fischbach, better known by his alias Markiplier, which also gave his popular YouTube channel its name. After playing over the years with horror videos combining animation and live action, the content creator decided to go big with a full-length horror film called “Iron Lung,” an adaptation of the computer game created by David Szymanski. Fischbach turned to his followers, more than 38 million across platforms, and asked for their support in funding the initiative, which eventually went ahead on a budget of just $3 million. He directed and wrote the film and also stars in it. He even decided to distribute it independently to hundreds of theaters across the United States. It was an uncalculated risk that proved successful, with revenues of more than $50 million.
What is the source of YouTubers’ devotion to the horror genre? In this respect, they are not much different from independent filmmakers in the United States who do not have major production bodies or Hollywood studios behind them. It turns out that horror films are the only ones that can be produced for pennies and still generate handsome profits. Traditionally, fans of the genre are more impressed by extreme scares and original scripts that go far than by the presence of stars or high production values. The main difference between conventional filmmakers and those who grew out of the internet is that while independent directors are forced to knock on doors and then on tables in search of funding sources, or look for financiers willing to invest in them, YouTubers can simply turn to their followers and subscribers and launch a ready-made crowdfunding campaign.
That is the creators’ side of the equation. But why are major studios, production companies and distributors such as A24, Universal, Neon and others putting money on amateur, inexperienced filmmakers and entrusting them with the resources to lead films when there are so many other talented and experienced directors looking for opportunities? It is unpleasant to say, but the central consideration is not the creators’ talent, skill or professionalism. It is the millions of followers they bring with them from the internet. A captive audience of fans. For these companies, the bottom line is the money coming in, and in a reality in which the film industry is in prolonged decline, when online creators are invited to write and direct films for the big screen, it is effectively their subscribers and followers who are being invited to buy a ticket and watch. Just as TikTok and Instagram influencers such as Addison Rae, Liza Koshy and King Bach are cast in series and films because of the promotional platform they bring with them, not because of their talent, the same is true of YouTubers, or of Zola and her 148 tweets that became a screenplay. Pulp fiction, in today’s terms.
