Make That Movie, Channel 4’s new comedy about a pair of filmmakers chasing public ideas across the country in matching purple jumpsuits, starts streaming on HBO Max on May 29. The series stars Sam Campbell and Aaron Chen and pushes each episode through a film made in three days, one per episode, from whatever premise the public throws at them.
Campbell, who described the project as “Let Campbell cook,” plays himself in an alternate reality as a fading, insecure Hollywood director. Chen plays Sebastian, the morose backer who bankrolls the movies and ends up absorbing much of the punishment. The setup is built to move fast and to break cleanly from the tidy rhythms of most comedy series, with every film forced through the same compressed timeline.
That speed matters because the films are not throwaway sketches. One of them is Snake Swap, a romance in which a couple are cursed to become snakes, but never at the same time. Another is an animated children’s film about a war between feet and hands, made for barefoot enthusiasts trapped in a mine. The result is a show that turns audience suggestions into full-length productions, then dares them to hold together under the pressure of three days and one very strange brief.
Joe Pelling co-wrote and directed the series, bringing a background that includes work on Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. His involvement helps explain the show’s mix of surreal detail and deadpan structure. The premise also fits Campbell’s recent career path: he moved to the UK in 2022 and has since popped up on Taskmaster, QI and Last One Laughing, where he has made a reputation for bending quiz and panel formats without ever quite playing them straight.
The show is being sold as a lifestyle-reality program with an eccentric Fab 5 of filmmaking, but that label only partly captures it. What makes Make That Movie stand out is the friction between the pitch and the product: public ideas become expensive-looking, full-length films at breakneck speed, while Campbell’s washed-up-director persona and Chen’s bleak financier keep the whole thing wobbling in comic tension. For viewers, the appeal is not just whether the films can be made, but whether this absurd system can produce anything that feels remotely watchable. From May 29, that is the question the series puts to the audience and then forces them to answer for themselves.
