Drop is one of the most clever original concepts we’ve seen among 2025 movie releases so far, especially for how it turns an everyday object like a cellphone into something terrifying. When CinemaBlend spoke to Drop’s director, Christopher Landon, about making the movie, he shared one unique problem the film posed, and it has everything to do with memes. Yes, memes.
The Blumhouse thriller follows single mom Violet (Meghann Fahy) as she tries to get back out there by going to dinner after hitting it off with a photographer named Henry (Brandon Sklenar) on a dating app. However, when she gets to the fancy high-rise Chicago building, she starts to receive “Digi-Drops” (similar to Airdrop) of memes from an unknown user that quickly turn into threats. When I asked Landon about getting the memes in Drop, he had this to say:
It took months. It took months to get those cleared, and I needed them cleared before we started shooting. Because I wanted them on the phones. So, it was a bit of a battle.
While we might share memes from the internet all the time with each other, when it comes to a famous meme being used in a movie like Drop, filmmakers have to get the rights in order to use them. Drop’s director shared that it actually “ took months” for many of the classic memes in the movie to get the green light from their respective owners. He also said this:
There was one meme that didn’t fully clear. It was very hard to get permission to use all of them, and we had to track everybody down. And some of the people in the memes have like agents now. They’re like celebrities. And, so that part was a bit of a challenge. And there was one, yeah, there was one meme in particular, and I don’t even know if I should name it. I don’t want to, I feel like I could get everybody in trouble, but it was something that had to be augmented.
Landon chose not to name the meme that was the toughest to nab, but I guess one can play a guessing game while watching the new streaming release. After we called the movie “a solid high-concept thriller” in our Drop review when it was released in theaters in April, it just became available to watch on Peacock.
During my conversation with the director, where we also talked about making a rare original movie amidst a crowd of remakes and hiding his villain in plain sight for the thrilling premise, he also shared why it was important to him for the memes to make it into the movie, despite the “challenge” to do so. In his words:
Most of the memes were actually in the script, which was great. And, the writers were so smart about choosing memes that everybody knows, because that’s what also helps ground the movie. We all have shared those memes in the past.
Have you ever been sent a meme through the drop function on phones? I know that I have at places like concerts, and it can be creepy sometimes. Drop takes this idea to a whole new level as Violet and her young son become threatened by the person behind these meme drops.
Now, I know I’ll never look at some of those famous photos the same again after seeing this fun thriller.
