For all you know, that viral tweet from your mutual might just be the next Hollywood blockbuster.
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For all the issues that social media has admittedly brought us, there’s no denying that, at least, we can find stories that will immediately have us stop scrolling. Whether it be a thread, post, or even private message, you can’t deny social media can be a gold mine for some pretty memorable stories, something the entertainment industry has taken notice of. In the same way that books have always been a go-to for adaptations, so too are we starting to see that thinking be applied to what people share on social media. From the viral to the seemingly mundane, scroll down for the movies that got their start thanks to someone posting on social media.
MARUPOK A+ (WHERE IS THE LIE)
Pinoy Twitter and beyond were captivated by the tea dropped by Janzen Torres in a Twitter thread in early 2020 exposing how she was a victim of an elaborate catfishing scheme that became even more unbelievable the deeper you went into the thread. If you read those tweets and thought that it would make for a good movie, you probably have the same thinking as Quark Henares, who directed the movie adaptation of the viral thread.
The movie, which received a wide release in 2024, sticks to the events of Torres’ tweets but also gives more time to showcase the two other main characters of the thread; the fake boyfriend, Theo Balmaceda, and the mastermind behind it all, Beanie Landridos. The result is a pretty funny dark comedy led by three excellent performances from EJ Jallorina, Maris Racal, and Royce Cabrera.
ZOLA
The year was 2015. Waitress and part-time stripper A’zaih King dropped a 148-tweet thread that was too wild to be true (but it was) about her trip to Florida. The thread was then expounded on in an article on Rolling Stone called Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted by David Kushner. Those two served as the foundation for the 2020 black comedy Zola.
The well-received film followed A’zaih, played by Taylour Paige, as she was convinced by her frenemy Stefani (Riley Keough) to travel together to Tampa, Florida for a weekend stripping job that goes widely off course. Fast-paced and frantic, Zola is the kind of movie that reminds you that anything can happen on spontaneous trips.
DEAR DAVID
In August 2017, cartoonist and former Buzzfeed writer Adam Ellis began a lowkey legendary Twitter thread about how a ghost child was supposedly haunting his apartment. Continuing into the start of 2018, the thread went massively viral, gaining Ellis over 1 million followers on Twitter, and catching the attention of BuzzFeed as they decided to adapt the story into a movie. Sadly, the film, which is named after the original thread, leaves much to be desired given its so-so quality. But at least we’ll always have the old tweets.
CATFISH
A movie so impactful that it coined the term catfishing and brought it into the mainstream lexicon. How we understand catfishing now came from this documentary putting the act to light. It all began when Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman filmed a young man named Nev as he began an online relationship with a woman named Megan. But, as their relationship continued, more and more did Megan come off as sus. This all led to the revelation that Megan was never real. The MTV reality TV series that followed further exposed catfishing as a real problem in the online dating world.
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