Another YouTube Phenomenon Is Crashing Theaters This Weekend

If you spend a lot of time on YouTube, you may have come across The Amazing Digital Circus, the viral animated series whose 2023 debut episode took the internet by storm and amassed more than 430 million views, the kind of numbers normally reserved for the likes of Mr.Beast, Cocomelon, or Charlie Bit My Finger. In 2024, the series — about a group of people with amnesia trapped inside a virtual world — started streaming on Netflix, and today, the final two episodes will be playing back-to-back on more than 2,230 screens worldwide.

Thanks to the breakout hits of Backrooms, Obsession, and Iron Lung, Hollywood is beside itself watching a generation of filmmakers take off from YouTube beginnings to massive theatrical success. Another one is landing this weekend. Will The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act upset box-office expectations in the same way?

So far, fears that an online leak of the film would rain on its box-office parade haven’t come true. On Thursday, The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act led the domestic box office with $7.8 million in ticket sales, beating out Scary Movie, Masters of the Universe, and the incumbent Backrooms on its first day. Many of those Thursday tickets came from presales, and it’s expected that its weekend sales will be front-loaded, but as of Friday morning, predictions for the film’s four-day total range from $9 million to $10 million to as high as $14 million or $15 million. It would be foolish to underestimate the power of an activated YouTube fandom. Entertainment-insights firm Greenlight Analytics estimates that up to 35 percent of the series’ enormous fanbase is willing to pay to see the film. “That’s really strong for a title without traditional studio marketing behind it,” says Brandon Katz, Greenlight’s director of insights and content strategy.

While the popularity of The Amazing Digital Circus is impressive, it’s not an isolated phenomenon. But series creator Gooseworx and YouTube-based production company Glitch are also the topmost wave of a larger, deeper current sweeping through the animation industry. For years now, YouTube has been transforming from a hobbyist watering hole for amateur animators into a fully fledged commercial distribution platform, and it’s helped independent web animation compete with the studio system for the attention of fans everywhere.

“You get to dictate what you make, how you make it, and when it comes out, and you retain ownership of your ideas without needless notes from suits or the risk of being shelved or canceled entirely,” says Joel Haver, a fellow independent YouTuber and animator who has also worked for studios on titles like Smiling Friends, and one of many in the animation community closely following how The Last Act performs. This weekend, Glitch is betting that the home-brewed YouTube alchemy of The Amazing Digital Circus can translate into box-office success, one that Glitch’s CEO says “has the potential to change how the entire industry views indie animation.”

Part of Amazing Digital Circus’s appeal comes down to its timely premise. The series is loosely based on a classic AI horror story, sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, but gives it a zoomer twist. Its AI villain, Caine, is more ChatGPT than Terminator: upbeat and eager to please, yet also utterly infuriating. He’s not trying to kill you, but he will rob your life of meaning, purpose, and connection. Episodes run to roughly a half-hour apiece, and after its theatrical bow this weekend, the ninth and last episode will debut on YouTube on June 19.

Alphabet’s humble, algorithmically powered online video-sharing tool — which to many has become all but synonymous with TV — has proven a key ingredient to the show’s success. Gooseworx, a self-taught indie animator, didn’t shop the premise for Amazing Digital Circus around at networks. She instead developed the series specifically for Glitch, which is based in Australia and also produces other popular shows like Lackadaisy, Murder Drones, and Knight of Guinevere. Glitch founders Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul have stated that their business model is “YouTube-first.” This allows them to operate outside of animation’s studio system, where animators are often overworked and underpaid, and capitalize on the platform’s engagement and community tools. Since its founding in 2017, Glitch has grown to employ 250 staffers worldwide. Without the platform, shows like Amazing Digital Circus would never have gained the popularity that it did.

YouTube’s audience is not just large (over 200 million adults in the U.S. alone), but also diverse — especially in terms of age. “The single largest bracket is actually 65-plus,” says Katz, “though 25-34 is the second largest.” Compare that to TikTok, whose users are overwhelmingly millennial and under, “and YouTube looks a lot more like a mainstream destination, which helps explain why something like Amazing Digital Circus can punch above its weight theatrically.”

Glitch is aware of the opportunity this represents, too, especially for an animated title: “When networks see animation, they either think it needs to be made for kids or be extremely adult,” Glitch CEO Kevin Lerdwichagul said in an interview with YouTube’s official blog. “Digital Circus sits in the middle of those demographics for an audience that networks don’t usually understand or invest much in.”

For animators, one of the most compelling reasons to release their work on YouTube — either on their own channels or through an organization like Glitch — is the creative freedom that comes with it. “The appeal is still control,” says Lee Hardcastle, a claymation artist and another YouTube-based animator who has worked on Smiling Friends (a show that was created by artists who cultivated large YouTube followings and sold it to Adult Swim). “No gatekeepers, no development cycles, no committees. You can make something strange, release it immediately, and see how people respond in real time. That direct line to an audience is something the studio system still can’t really replicate.”

For Haver, sticking to YouTube is also a matter of principle. “I turned down a major streamer to make an animated series for them for this very reason,” he says. “I’d much rather make my stuff for less, and make less from it, if it meant I retained my true independence.” 

Already, Glitch has been able to use the popularity of Amazing Digital Circus to strike up deals that up until recently would have been unthinkable. Its distribution agreement with Netflix is entirely non-exclusive, and episodes have continued to appear on YouTube before they start streaming. The two-week release window of The Last Act — referring to the time during which a film can be seen in cinemas only before it starts streaming — is equally unheard-of, being significantly shorter than the current 45-day average.

As Amazing Digital Circus concludes its first and, as Gooseworx has long stressed, only season, the future of the animation business hangs in the balance. Some hope that the traditional animation industry will take notes and afford greater autonomy to animators. Others worry that the bigger web animation becomes, the more it will start to resemble the studio system. “A lot of creators are now running teams, building pipeliness, and essentially operating like micro-studios,” says Hardcastle. Some critics in the community wonder whether studios like Glitch are too big to still be considered independent.

Another possibility is that the two sides of the industry will remain as they are: distinct and different. “The interesting shift is that animation no longer has a single center of gravity,” Hardcastle adds. “It’s split between institutional production and highly personal, often chaotic independent output — and the tension between those two is where a lot of the most interesting work is happening.”