NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies Make ‘Bird Box’ Challenge a Halftime Game

At this point, Bird Box is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. The movie has set social media ablaze and now, professional sports teams are taking advantage of the craze.

In tonight’s game between the Memphis Grizzlies and Brooklyn Nets, the Tennessee-based team hosted a game using the “Bird Box Challenge.” In the game, a mother and her two kids were tasked with finding Grizz — the Grizzlies’ mascot — while blindfolded.

Fortunately enough for the family, they were able to locate the mascot and, in turn, were award three courtside seats to watch the remainder of the game from.

Earlier this week, Netflix had to take to social media to warn fans not to hurt themselves trying to go viral while performing the blindfolded challenge.

“Can’t believe I have to say this,” the streaming giant tweeted. “But: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.” —Netflix US

Based on a book of the same name by Josh Malerman, Bird Box has a much more positive ending than its novel counterpart. According to the film’s director Susanne Bier, making the ending happier was a major objective during production.

“The movie is, in many aspects, different from the book, but it’s also very rooted in the book,” Bier previously said. “The book also has a kind of positive ending and I would not have wanted to do an apocalyptic movie that didn’t have a hopeful ending. In a way, pretty much everything I’ve done has had some sort of a hopeful ending. I’m not particularly interested for the audience to leave, from the cinema or their own screen, with a kind of completely bleak point of view. That’s not really what I believe in. And so for me it was key and, and part of what made me interested in it, was that that if this scary, dystopian story, which actually has a hopeful undercurrent … there is a hopefulness in trust. That is a hopefulness in love. There is a hopeful note in certain values that I really appreciate it. And I thought that was hugely important.”

Starring Sandra Bullock, Rosa Salazar, BD Wong, Sarah Paulson, John Malkovich, and Machine Gun Kelly, Bird Box is a Netflix original film directed by Susanne Bier on a script from Oscar-nominated (Arrival) scribe Eric Heisserer.

Bird Box is now streaming on Netflix.