Half-Life game series need no introduction.
The first Half Life game, originally released way back in 1998, is considered by many as the first-person shooter that refined its genre.
Subsequent games in the series, which include Half-Life: Opposing Force, Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Decay, which were then followed by critically acclaimed Half-Life 2, followed by its different episodes, which were then followed by virtual reality (VR) game Half-Life: Alyx, have met varying degrees of receptions.
But regardless, the series have seen successes that little have ever dreamed of even hearing.
And this time, thanks to the internet, the franchise is seeing a film debut, with Michael Bay at the helm.
But instead of using the Half-Life brand, the film is using the 'Skibidi Toilet' approach.
It all began on February 7th, 2023, when Alexey Gerasimov uploaded an 11-second video to his YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom! called “skibidi toilet," which featured a head emerging from a toilet singing.
At that time, little did he know it, that the then-23-year-old from the former Soviet republic of Georgia had launched a genuine cultural phenomenon.
Gerasimov had been uploading original animations since 2016, but his clip of a head popping out of a toilet singing a catchy yet incomprehensible song was the one that people like.
The series that depict an escalating war between Toilets and Cyborgs, have become one that’s unquestionably one of the internet’s weirdest obsessions.
When it went viral, the Skibidi Toilet video series have generated a total of billions of combined views from its over 70 videos, which make the bulk of Gerasimov's DaFuq!?Boom! channel's viewership.
Data on monthly YouTube views shows that around 16 billion views have been achieved from February 2023 to June 2024, meaning that Gerasimov's channel earned around one billion views per month in just shy of a year and a half.
Billions of more views were gained from social media platforms, like TikTok.
This phenomenon has attracted the attention of big players in the entertainment industry.
One of which, according to reports, include Michael Bay and former Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman, who have begun early talks to take the web series created by Alexey Gerasimov, and make it a franchise.
The duo is said to have plans to adapt Skibidi Toilet for its own film or television.
Goodman, whose resume includes the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, and the SpongeBob SquarePants series, said that: "I don’t think that there’s ever been anything that we’ve been involved with that mirrors the growth of [‘Skibidi Toilet’]."
Goodman described this endeavor as not being a "be-all, end-all for us," he sounds optimistic about working with Bay to bring Skibidi Toilet to the big and small screens through their Invisible Narratives independent studio.
The Skibidi Toilet series, which doesn’t contain any clear dialogue, is packed with references to various video games.
But the most prominent, would be the leader of the Toilet, called G-Toilet, who borrows his name and likeness from Half-Life's G-Man.
The characters in the Half-Life series don't actually need their own films.
Unlike games like Halo, The Last of Us, and some others that have had varying levels of success moving from game to screen, Half-Life doesn't have the kind of story that makes sense for widescreen adoption.
But Skibidi Toilet, which is created with Valve’s Source Filmmaker, a program that incorporates assets from Half-Life and some other popular games, is spawning an entire fictional universe that the internet simply loves: a war between human-headed toilets.
Instead of Gordon Freeman as the protagonist, G-Toilet is seen interacting with other people with appliances like speakers and cameras for heads.
Its success is generating quite a high interest amongst fans, that even the The Rock, Bad Boys, and Transformers director is turning his head.
Goodman called Skibidi Toilet "something that could be the next Transformers or could be a Marvel universe" and said that he and Bay "are entertaining the thought of a hybrid animated/live action version of Skibidi … likened stylistically to the John Wick and District 9 movies."
