Y2K Filmmaker and Stars Talk the Film’s Time-Hopping Terrors

Back in the ’90s, the rise of the Internet made a number of things possible that people only dreamed could ever happen, and while there was the opportunity for innovation, the end of the decade brought an unexpected danger upon us all. According to some analysts, countless computers across the world were programmed to not be able to compensate for internalized calendars to be able to compute for the year 2000, and given how there was no tech-based fallout from January 1, 2000, it feels laughable in retrospect to think civilization was on the brink of destruction. That’s exactly why filmmaker Kyle Mooney blended the threatening conundrum with plenty of humor when he explored the hypothetical situation for his film Y2K, which is in theaters now.

“I was always aware of the general idea of it and that all of the computers would reset and all that jazz, but I didn’t really know how scared people were. I think everyone else forgot, too,” star Jaeden Martell shared with ComicBook when reflecting on the paranoia that unfolded before he was born. “And so when you ask that question, ‘How was that for you?’ people were genuinely getting ready for something. That was news to me.”

Star Julian Dennison added, “I think it’s crazy how, I was just thinking, I feel like the world was always coming to an end. There’s always a date where people are scared, or looking forward to.”

The movie is described, “On the last night of 1999, two high school juniors crash a New Years Eve party, only to find themselves fighting for their lives in this dial-up disaster comedy.”

Given that the film unfolds on New Year’s Eve 1999, Mooney was tasked with honoring the era authentically without just tossing in references arbitrarily.

“I wrote it with my friend Evan [Winter], who is also a Y2K guy. I was in ninth grade during Y2K, he was in eighth grade, and so it was awesome and fun revisiting all these references,” the filmmaker detailed of finding cultural touchstones of 1999. “And, ‘Do you remember this? Do you remember that? I don’t remember that, okay, that’s not going in the movie.’ It was a challenge, but, truly, it’s the type of challenge that I love, because it was a lot of going on YouTube, watching video yearbooks from the era, pulling screenshots of clothing or images from video stores of the era, whatever it was.”

He continued, “Sometimes it would just be, can you clear this thing that we all love that we think is a fun reference that we want to put in the movie? But, mostly, shout outs to our production designers, Jason Singleton and our costumer [Katina Danabassis]. I think we knew what we wanted and we wanted it to feel like our teenage lives as much as possible. It was, ‘What can we get away with? What will they allow us to do?’”

To fully honor the era, there’s even an appearance of Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, which also includes a nod to the band’s breakout hit, a cover of George Michael’s “Faith.”

As far as how Mooney and winter conjured the concept, he revealed, “Always the plan. I think within the first week of writing it with Evan, we pitched, ‘It would be really fun to have Fred in there, because he’s a transcendent, iconic figure of that time period.’ When he agreed to do it, we were so psyched. The song was always in there. I love those movie moments of a song — I think of Ghostbusters II, at the end when they all sing, ‘You’re love is taking me higher…’ That thing where everybody comes together and saves the world. He was down. It took him a couple Zooms to convince him, but he was into it.”

Y2K is in theaters now.