School’s officially out for summer at Kyle University.
The 7-foot muscle-head has spent the last 4 weeks making the rounds on social media, accruing greater than 60 million views and 30,000 Instagram followers and becoming the manosphere’s latest “high-value” poster boy. His Tate brothers-esque content — built around seducing women, “looksmaxxing” and collecting “aura points” — swiftly got him banned from TikTok.
However it seems, Kyle’s entire red-pill brand is definitely just a few savvy film publicity.
The Hollywood Reporter can reveal that the costumed “manosphere recruiters” galavanting across the industry’s most famed studios and offices across Los Angeles and London this week are indeed the finale act of this viral sensation. All along, Kyle University has been an anti-manosphere satirical campaign using social media as an elaborate Trojan horse to attract Hollywood’s attention to Impressionable, the debut film from 22-year-old British director Noah Caplan.
Kyle, the faux character and self-proclaimed “lion in a world of dolphins” (played by U.S. bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn), has captured Instagram, YouTube and Facebook users. He’s fooled a large chunk of the manosphere, including several well-known red-pill commentators who hurled abuse at feminist creators Izzy Taffs and Maia Wall.
Since Caplan’s elaborate bit went live, studios and talent reps swept in to specific interest — momentum that the young filmmaker desired to jump on. The bait-and-switch culminated in a stunt outside major entertainment hubs in Los Angeles and London on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Kyles have popped up, enrollment papers in hand, pitching a made-up online course to top executives outside the likes of the BBC, Lionsgate, the British Film Institute, UTA, Working Title, WME, Channel 4, and major streamers. On the L.A. hit list was Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment, where a Kyle asked security if he could “seek advice from the Ken in charge.” The targets are hand-picked by Caplan as his “dream collaborators” on Impressionable — from Warner Bros. Clockwork division to U.K. distributor True Brit — which is currently looking for packaging, financing and distribution.
A slew of young, digital talent coming up through the ranks of social media were enlisted for the stunt. Comedians Rufus Rice, Auden Barnes (“UncleBenMyBrudda”), Tommy Solemn, “Toshua,” “Panchbantz” and Ben McGuinness all appeared as various manosphere characters across the campaign, with a few of them even playing the Kyle University recruits this week.
One other Kyle hands out leaflets outside the BBC.
Courtesy of YOOF
Contained in the leaflets flung at reception desks and staff was a heartfelt pitch from Caplan about Impressionable, a satirical coming-of-age comedy-drama following a teenage boy’s idolization of a manosphere influencer, which manifests as a fictional mentor. The feature goals to “tackle toxic masculinity while positively spotlighting the true, on a regular basis men who actually shape a young boy’s life.”
Caplan, who founded his own talent management agency YOOF, has no inherited network or contacts within the film industry. At 17, he persuaded British star Danny Dyer to star in his 30-minute mental health awareness drama (later acquired by ITV) by DM’ing a whole bunch of the actor’s friends on social media. THR caught up with Caplan about talking Dyer into the film last yr, where he elaborated on getting his film education through YouTube, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons-style.
He gave up on cold-emailing studios about Impressionable and decided to get more creative. “I used to be at all times going to seek out a way, even when it took one other three years,” Caplan tells THR. “What we’ve built with Kyle University though is a stronger pitch than any email I could ever have sent.”
“Kyle is bait, and that’s the entire point. We’ve replicated the manosphere’s entire ecosystem with a personality who’s dangerous yet entertaining. You could possibly come across a harmless clip of this douchey frat-bro, find it funny, and hit follow. It won’t be until just a few posts in that his real agenda creeps in: the misogyny, the bigotry, the peddling of self-hatred for profit.”
Caplan, nonetheless, is careful to not mock the young men who fall for it.
Kyle (Mike O’Hearn, left) and ‘Impressionable’ director Noah Caplan.
Courtesy of YOOF
“We’re not here to vilify the audience who get pulled in,” he says about his captive audience. “I’ve had mates pulled in, and a few of it even skimmed near me in probably the most vulnerable moments of my very own adolescence. But hopefully Impressionable can expose that mad old monopoly, and show young men there’s a more whimsical approach to work out who you’re, without leaning on some parasocial stranger to inform you who that’s.”
Caplan admits the stunt was “cheeky.” He continued: “We would like our project noticed by the industry we admire so greatly. Coming from Essex, England, there aren’t too many talent scouts or film and TV power-brokers hanging around. Emails get ignored, cold calls are outdated and annoying. We thought this might not only get us in front of the correct people, but in addition generate a little bit of fun in such a madly busy town for a few days.”
And if nothing else, he hopes it brightened just a few people’s Tuesday or Wednesday.
Says Caplan: “For the executives […] coming face-to-face with a 7ft, 300lb man in neon headbands and multi-colored bicep tassels might just be the midweek pick-me-up they needed. I hope it caught people’s interest, or at the very least intrigued them. And if not, I hope we managed to entertain just a few people on their every day commute.”