Following the commercial success of Backrooms, entertainment studio A24 appears to be setting its sights on yet another major internet horror phenomenon. The studio is currently moving forward with a new installment in the long-running V/H/S horror anthology series, this time setting the narrative within the sprawling, collaborative universe of the SCP Foundation. However, the project has run into immediate turbulence. Almost as soon as the film was officially announced, it was met with severe community backlash, widespread confusion over licensing, and mounting questions regarding its viability, leaving V/H/S: SCP on remarkably shaky ground before principal photography or distribution can fully take shape.
For the uninitiated, the SCP Foundation is a massive, crowdsourced creepypasta project that, much like the Backrooms, originally sprouted from the anonymous message boards of 4chan. The fictional SCP Foundation—an acronym standing for Special Containment Procedures—is tasked with documenting, capturing, and securely containing a vast array of paranormal, supernatural, and cosmic anomalies that threaten human normalcy. The overarching narrative is uniquely structured, told primarily through dry, clinical wiki entries that meticulously mimic the tone of documentation one might file while working within a shadowy, clandestine government agency. It merges sci-fi cosmic horror with the chilling mundanity of bureaucratic nightmares, making it a natural fit for a monster-of-the-week style anthology format like the V/H/S series.
Yet, unlike its handling of the Backrooms project, where A24 collaborated directly with Kane Parsons, the creator of a YouTube series that achieved massive popularity within the community, the studio appears to have completely bypassed any engagement with the core SCP community. The SCP Foundation Wiki, which serves as the official digital home for all lore and community creations associated with the universe, published an immediate and pointed statement following the film’s public announcement. The community statement read that administrators had not had any communication with the filmmakers, producers, or distributors for the project, despite their best efforts, and to the best of their knowledge, the studio had not made any efforts to contact them.
DrEverettMann, a prominent administrator on the SCP Foundation Wiki, echoed these frustrations in statements to The Verge, noting that community leaders had made several direct attempts to contact the production team following the project’s announcement but had yet to receive any response.
This disconnect extends far beyond a simple failure to generate goodwill among passionate fans. At the heart of the controversy are complex and rigid licensing rules that govern all SCP material. The entire SCP Foundation universe is organized and protected under a specific Creative Commons license, namely CC BY-SA 3.0, which includes a ShareAlike provision. Under the terms of this specific open-source framework, while virtually anyone is legally permitted to create and distribute derivative works based on SCP lore, those new works must also allow anyone else to copy, redistribute, or create further derivative works based on them. For a major Hollywood studio reliant on traditional revenue streams, proprietary ownership, and theatrical exclusivity, this legal framework creates an intensely complicated hurdle.
The current situation bears a striking resemblance to missteps made by A24 following the release of Backrooms. In that instance, the studio angered independent creators within the community by initially filing copyright claims against other popular Backrooms content creators on YouTube, before ultimately withdrawing those claims after director Kane Parsons intervened. Sensitive to history repeating itself, A24 and its production partners on the new venture—Image Nation Studios and Spooky Pictures—have been eager to clarify that they are not attempting to assert exclusive intellectual property rights over the overarching SCP universe. While A24 itself declined to comment directly on the developing situation, Monique Levine, a spokesperson representing both Image Nation and Spooky Pictures, told The Verge that A24’s worldwide rights pertain strictly to the specific film project currently being produced.
The core problem, however, is that under the exact terms of the license used by the SCP Foundation, no entity can legally claim exclusive rights to any SCP-related material. Anna Tumadóttir, the CEO of Creative Commons, explained to The Verge that while anyone is legally permitted to use works available under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license—even for commercial purposes—adaptations must strictly be released under the exact same terms as the original material. Furthermore, Tumadóttir noted that unless a separate, formal agreement is reached with the original copyright holders, a studio-produced feature film like this would need to be released under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license or a compatible later version. This would require proper attribution to the original creators and, crucially, would mean the studio could not maintain exclusive distribution rights, leaving anyone else completely free to redistribute or stream the finished movie under those exact same open terms.
Legal experts have emphasized just how unusual this arrangement is for the traditional entertainment industry. Paul Szynol, a law professor at the University of Michigan and Villanova, pointed out to The Verge that while anyone—including A24, Netflix, or everyday citizens—is theoretically free to produce an SCP film and attempt to screen it in commercial theaters, the studio would fundamentally lack the legal mechanism to stop anyone else from making secondary adaptations of its film or freely redistributing it. As Szynol noted, operating under such conditions represents an extremely unusual business model for any major studio.
DrEverettMann of the SCP Foundation Wiki offered a similar perspective, explaining that while the open-source license wouldn’t technically prevent the film from being shown in theaters, nor would it stop theaters from charging standard admission prices, figuring out whether it is practical to release a motion picture under conventional theatrical distribution methods remains a deeply trickier question. Mann elaborated that the simple fact that anyone is legally empowered to distribute a CC BY-SA-licensed work means that standard theatrical exclusivity simply does not apply. It is fundamentally impossible for any single entity to hold exclusive rights to a film distributed under a CC BY-SA license, raising serious questions about how many consumers would willingly pay premium prices to see a movie in a theater when they could legally download or watch it at home for free.
This leaves A24 and its partners facing a difficult array of strategic options moving forward. The studio could choose to forge ahead with the project as currently planned, brushing off community concerns and dealing with the potential legal fallout later. However, as Tumadóttir warned, Creative Commons licenses, including ShareAlike provisions, have routinely been tested and successfully enforced in courts of law around the world when necessary. Szynol concurred with this assessment, cautioning that if the studio attempts to enforce proprietary control over an open-source work, A24’s version of the film would ultimately be deemed unauthorized and infringing, effectively spelling the death of the project.
A more likely alternative is that A24 and Spooky Pictures may choose to quietly abandon the official SCP branding altogether, while still drawing heavy "inspiration" from the rich source material to craft a more traditional, proprietary horror anthology segment. Such a tactic has been successfully utilized by other creators dealing with commercial works derived from the ecosystem, such as the acclaimed novel There is No Antimemetics Division written by prominent SCP Foundation contributor QNTM.
An alternative, though far bolder and less probable path, would involve releasing the movie directly under the required ShareAlike license, bravely hoping that the production costs could still be successfully recouped even without the safety net of traditional copyright exclusivity. As the project navigates these turbulent waters, the studio has yet to detail its official next steps.
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