Horror adaptation … David Howard Thornton as Steamboat Willie in Screamboat. Photograph: SKLAE/Signature Entertainment View image in fullscreen Horror adaptation … David Howard Thornton as Steamboat Willie in Screamboat. Photograph: SKLAE/Signature Entertainment Film The roaring 20s: how the current decade revolutionised cinema Pre-Covid, the movie landscape was dramatically different: YouTubers weren’t dominating the box office, video game spin-offs rarely made an impact and Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t yet the star of a slasher movie. Why such a flurry of innovation – and what will be next?
Stuart Heritage Thu 23 Jul 2026 17.00 CEST Last modified on Thu 23 Jul 2026 18.21 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google C inema has always been a medium of research and development. At any given point, the industry is searching for yet another breakthrough that can drive it into the future. Synchronised sound in the 1920s. Technicolor in the 1930s. The invention of the modern blockbuster in the 1970s.
Conversely, the consensus is that, if the 2020s has a defining trend, then it is one of decline. The theatrical experience is under attack from all angles: streaming, YouTube , a once-in-a-century health crisis that shut cinemas down entirely. And yet, if you look closer, this has actually been one of the most innovative decades that cinema has ever seen. Whether down to technology or desperation, the film industry has spent these last few years figuring out new ways to make films that simply could not have existed even at the turn of the decade.
Currently, the most notable of these is the way that cinema has become a conversation with YouTube. Back in 2005, when Jawed Karim uploaded the first video ( the 19-second Me at the Zoo ) to the platform, YouTube felt like a novelty. It was cheap and cheerful, a collection of cat videos and people falling over. How things have changed. Not only has it become the largest streaming platform in the world, but the first generation of adults who grew up with YouTube has come of age.
View image in fullscreen Creepypasta comes good … Chiwetel Ejiofor in Backrooms. Photograph: A24/AP As we speak, the seventh and eighth biggest films of 2026 have been directed by people who learned their trade making content for YouTube. Obsession ( worldwide gross: $442m ) was directed by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old who dropped out of film school to make YouTube videos and TikToks. Meanwhile, Backrooms ( worldwide gross: $384m ) is even more explicitly internet-inspired. Directed by the then 20-year-old Kane Parsons, the film is based on a series of shorts he began uploading to YouTube in 2022, which in turn were inspired by some creepypasta (web-based horror content) that has been floating around online since 2019.
A decade ago, studios would have got this disastrously wrong. Ask them to adapt a YouTube video and they would have hired Michael Bay and Rihanna to make David After Dentist: The Motion Picture ; it would have baffled anyone who didn’t watch YouTube – and appalled anyone who did. This is the first time that the industry has trusted natives to make the films they want to make. Clearly, given the enormous financial returns, it will not be the last. Steven Spielberg is now producing Alex Kister’s The Mandela Catalogue , based on a terrifying analogue horror series that has run on YouTube since 2021.
This would also be a good time to mention the rise of the copyright expiry movie. In 1998, the Copyright Term Extension Act…