It’s not often that a TikTok video gets attention for the right reasons. The micro-video social site is usually a landfill of mediocre dance videos and other randomness – until now.
Julian Bass, a 20-year-old Georgia State University theatre major, recently went viral with the coolest superhero video ever. In the teen’s self-produced, 20-second clip set to “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles, Bass transforms into his favourite heroes – a Jedi Knight, Ben 10 and Spider-Man.
The video also includes some pretty awesome scene changes.
Two of the three featured heroes are owned by the Walt Disney Company and Bass urged viewers to share the video, hoping that the folks from Disney might see it.
“If y’all can retweet enough times that Disney calls, that’d be greatly appreciated”, he said on Twitter.
if y’all can retweet this enough times that Disney calls, that’d be greatly appreciated pic.twitter.com/GrKlIRxg3J
— Julian Bass (@thejulianbass) July 2, 2020
The tweet has since garnered more than 1.3 million likes, 568.7k retweets and over 9000 responses.
And thanks to the sheer volume of shares, Julian managed to get the attention of Disney Executive Chairman and former CEO Bob Iger, who replied in the best way possible – “The world’s gonna know your name!!!”
To which Julian responded, “This is the beginning!!!” and “Let’s schedule a time to talk!!!” in consecutive tweets.
The world’s gonna know your name!!!
— Robert Iger (@RobertIger) July 3, 2020
The video also got the attention of Sony, who replied simply with side-eye and mind-blown emojis. Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad director James Gunn tweeted the praise-hands emoji. While Scrubs alum, Zach Braff said, “Hire this man, Gunn!”
Other famous folks who noticed the video were Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, and Josh Gad, who voices Olaf in both Frozen movies.
The superhero video has proved very popular among fans, prompting them to call for Julian to be cast as protagonist Miles Morales in a live-action version of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Bass reiterated the sentiment in a few interviews about the experience, claiming that he now feels as though he’s in the running to potentially be cast as Miles Morales‘ Spider-Man.
Whether anything comes of this speculative casting remains to be seen. But then again, stranger things have happened.
