Of all the doggedly unhinged concoctions that could come out of this dystopian meme hell society on the precipice of a bloated, public domain-enabled, AI-abusing content influx, a live-action Popeye movie starring Conor McGregor is quite the bowl of seafood chowder.
It would be, anyway, if it were actually real.
Is Conor McGregor starring in a Popeye movie?
For those of you who still haven’t somehow clued in, no, McGregor won’t be putting his spin on the beloved, spinach-munching cartoon sailor at any point in the foreseeable future, as the trailer above for Popeye the Sailor Man is a fake one.
The trailer comes out of KH Studio, a channel known for dreaming up concept trailers for non-existent movies and posting them online. It isn’t shy about what these videos actually are, either, so any bamboozling that has gone on as a result of this trailer is entirely the result of reckless naivety.
Those of us who tuned in to Doug Liman’s reimagined Road House movie—which featured McGregor as Knox, one of the film’s antagonists—know that at least part of this trailer was lifted directly from the Jake Gyllenhaal-led action thriller. The uncanny closeup of McGregor, meanwhile, is almost certainly the result of some sort of AI software, which if I had to guess, also had a hand in creating the dialogue soundbites.
In any case, it’s clear that KH Studio had an absolute blast dreaming this one up, even going as far as suggesting that Taika Waititi would be pulling the hypothetical directorial strings, a suggestion that evokes a curiosity drenched in a degree of morbidity that I wasn’t aware existed up until now.
Luckily, those aren’t depths I need to contend with right now, because Taika Waititi is not directing a Conor McGregor-led Popeye movie, nor does a Conor McGregor-led Popeye movie exist. Carry on.
(featured image: KH Studio)
