Who would have thought that one of the entries the SCP Foundation needed would be for copyright lawyers? You might be familiar with the compendium of internet horror known as the SCP Foundation. If you’re not, you will be if you keep reading. In the wake of indie horror getting a pick-me-up thanks to Backrooms and Obsession, Hollywood wants to tap that well harder. A24 recently announced its intention to make a film based on the aforementioned SCP Foundation. Now, the production Neon is announcing their intention as well. But who owns the rights to the SCP? How does one use them? It’s complicated.
What is the SCP Foundation?
Let’s start with the easiest part to understand. The SCP Foundation in an online collection of stories revolving around a fictional organization. SCP stands for Secure, Contain, Protect. They’re a government group dedicated to harboring bizarre and paranormal things. They can be something like SCP-871. It’s a cake that if not eaten by a human will replicate itself in 24 hours. Then the replica will do the same thing. Ultimately, if not consumed regularly, the entire world would be overwhelmed by cake. Or SCP-173 which seems to be a living being made out of concrete and rebar. It moves when no one is looking and just snaps people’s necks with impunity whenever it can.
You could create a potential SCP entry right now. You could have a floating mass made out of books that transcribes every word it hears. Then it removes those words from existence and memory. How many words does it contain that we’ll never know existed? Guess we shouldn’t talk around it. Boom, there’s an SCP. And if that was submitted to the website and approved, it would be subject to specific copyrights. In this case it’s the Creative Commons License BY-SA. So what does that mean?
Breaking Down the Creative Commons License
The Creative Commons license boils down to saying, you can use this material if you cite it. But even if you do, you don’t own it in the sense of no one else being able to use your work. And there are other limitations based on the type of CCL. The BY-SA is important in this regard. The BY means you can use it for commercial purposes as long as you give credit.
The SA adds a twist that’s crucial here. It means that if you do make a commercial work based on it, then that commercial work also has to share the same license. So, in theory, if someone wanted to make an SCP film they can do so and make a commercial profit of it as long as they give credit. But once that film is released, anyone can take that movie and rebroadcast it commercially to. And so on and so on.
When what you make is yours but can also be freely used by others with the same stipulations, that’s not an ideal position for a Hollywood production company. And yet, A24 seems intent on doing this without adhering to the Creative Commons License. Their upcoming film, V/H/S: SCP looks to take the V/H/S horror franchise and bring it into the world of the SCP Foundation. But how can they do that? The SCP Foundation site provided a statement about the matter.
“To be clear: we have not had any communication with the filmmakers, producers, or distributors for this project, despite our best efforts, and to the best of our knowledge they have not made any efforts to contact us. Furthermore, A24 does not and cannot have any exclusive rights to anything related to the SCP Foundation, including any films that Spooky Pictures or anyone else may choose to create.”
Enter Neon
That’s pretty decisive language. And now we have Neon entering the picture in a different way. They’re stating that they have an SCP film coming up that WILL follow the BY-SA elements of the Creative Commons license. That is pretty astounding if it’s completely true. That’s a huge financial gamble in how much control it sacrifices over the film. But that could also be incredibly endearing to the community. Depending on how they go about it that is. It could be extremely revolutionary to that end. As of right now we don’t have much information about the film outside of the premise. Also, that it “will focus on platforming emerging filmmakers” and the project is due in 2027.
We intend to keep an extremely close eye on this story. As in, SCP-173 level of eyes on it. Neon could be setting themselves up to blow the doors off of the Hollywood model.
