A24 Is Turning the SCP Foundation Into a Movie, and the Community That Wrote It Isn’t Happy

A24 has a new target for its internet-horror playbook: the SCP Foundation. The studio announced on September 15 that it is producing V/H/S: SCP, a feature film that pulls the two-decade-old online horror mythology into its V/H/S found-footage anthology franchise, with a theatrical release targeted for 2027. The catch is that the SCP Foundation isn’t a forgotten property nobody has heard of. It is one of the largest fan-run writing projects on the internet, and the community behind it wasted no time pointing out that A24 doesn’t actually own any of the material it is adapting.

What Is the SCP Foundation?

The SCP Foundation began as a single anonymous post on 4chan’s /x/ board in June 2007, describing a shapeshifting concrete statue called SCP-173 that can only move when nobody is looking directly at it. The idea, later attributed to a user known as Moto42 (Wesley Williams), snowballed into a shared universe about a secretive organization that captures, contains, and studies anomalous objects, creatures, and phenomena to keep the world safe, and ignorant, of them. When the original hosting service switched to a paid model, the project moved to its own Wikidot site in July 2008, where it settled into the Creative Commons license that still defines it today. Written in the dry, clinical tone of classified research files, the Foundation’s world is overseen by a shadow council called the O5 Council and staffed, in its more dangerous experiments, by disposable “D-class personnel.” Nearly two decades later, the wiki hosts more than 10,400 SCP object entries and 6,300 companion short stories in English alone, translated into 15 other languages, and has been called possibly the largest collaborative writing project in history.

The Community Pushes Back

Because the SCP Foundation is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, anyone is technically free to write, remix, or adapt SCP stories for free, and no single company can claim exclusive ownership over the underlying universe. That’s exactly what several members of the SCP community pointed out within days of the announcement, arguing that A24’s deal only covers the specific film it is making and can’t stop anyone else from continuing to publish or adapt SCP material themselves. A24 has since clarified that its rights apply to the new movie and not to the broader SCP Foundation property, framing the project as a tribute to the community rather than a takeover of it. It’s a rare case of a major studio announcement landing in the middle of an active rights debate with the very fandom it’s trying to win over.

A24 is hoping to repeat the success of Backrooms, its own internet-born horror hit, with V/H/S: SCP

Familiar Territory for Gamers

Long before A24 got involved, the SCP Foundation had already crossed over into games more than once. The fan-made survival horror title SCP: Containment Breach became a cult favorite after its 2012 release, and the multiplayer SCP: Secret Laboratory has been running since 2017. More recent entries include the co-op shooter SCP: 5K, originally announced as SCP: Pandemic, from Affray Interactive, and the episodic adventure SCP: Secret Files, both from 2022, plus 2025’s SCP: Fragmented Minds. The Foundation’s containment-report format and central premise have also been cited as influences on Remedy’s Control and Project Moon’s Lobotomy Corporation, so a lot of horror and gaming fans will already recognize the tone A24 is trying to capture.

Who’s Behind the Camera

V/H/S: SCP is being co-produced by Spooky Pictures, the horror banner founded by Roy Lee and Steven Schneider, and Image Nation Studios, whose CEO Ben Ross is attached as an executive producer. Producers Josh Goldbloom and Michael Schreiber bring franchise experience with them, with Goldbloom carrying producer credits back through V/H/S/94, V/H/S/99, and V/H/S/Halloween. Rami Yasin, Jakob Pollack, and longtime V/H/S creative force Brad Miska round out the executive producer team. In a joint statement, the producers said, “Internet lore is quickly rising as a compelling source of new stories.”

A New Chapter for V/H/S

The V/H/S franchise has released a new found-footage anthology almost every year since its 2012 original, but nearly all of its sequels, V/H/S/94, V/H/S/85, V/H/S/99, V/H/S/Halloween, and V/H/S/Beyond, went straight to Shudder rather than into theaters, while the very first V/H/S only got a limited theatrical run through Magnolia Pictures alongside its VOD release. V/H/S: SCP is being positioned as the franchise’s first wide theatrical entry, and it will follow the next installment, the music-themed V/H/S/Mixtape, which premieres on Shudder on October 9. The timing lines up with A24’s own record year, since Backrooms, its theatrical adaptation of another internet horror concept, has now crossed roughly $393 million worldwide to become the studio’s highest-grossing release ever. No director, cast, or specific release date has been announced for V/H/S: SCP yet.

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Picture Source: A24