A24 bought an SCP Foundation movie this month, and within hours the wiki's own licensing team pushed back, because the SCP universe is a fan-built collaborative site where thousands of contributors write the monsters, according to Deadline. Now Neon has countered with its own SCP movie for the same 2027 window. It is not being sold as a product. It is being sold as an "open-source horror project" to be released under a Creative Commons license.
A fan wiki just became the rarest asset in Hollywood: IP the fans can fire the studio over. A24 bought the movie this month, and the wiki's licensing team objecting within hours is the new normal for this property. The site has been running since 2008. Thousands of contributors, no writers' room, no owner. That is why two of the most acquisitive studios in town are bidding on it, and why a group of fans is now effectively the board of directors.
Neon's move is the genius and the absurd. The license is CC BY-SA, which means anyone can copy the movie, screen it, remaster it, and sell the remaster, as long as they credit the wiki's creators and use the same license. The best marketing plan for a horror movie is a threat: the fans are the studio now.
Both studios are bidding on the same 2027 window, and nobody knows which film makes theaters first. What is clear is that the property has no price tag, because it has no owner. The fans are the only shareholders who get to vote no, and they have already exercised it once.
The punchline is the license itself. A studio, in the history of the studio, is now shipping a movie under the license of free software. The guilds are not the gatekeepers. The commit log is.
YOUR TURN: Is an open-source horror movie a marketing stunt, or the end of the studio system?
Comments (1)