'Feels Good Man' Trailer: Pepe The Frog Creator Tries To Wrestle His Creation Back From White Supremacists

Pepe the Frog wasn't always a symbol of white supremacy. It started out as an innocent cartoon character created by artist Matt Furie for an underground comic called Boy's Club, but he improbably became a meme and was eventually co-opted by the alt-right into a symbol of hatred that was wielded like a weapon in various online forums. Feels Good Man is a documentary about the creation of Pepe, the character's unlikely journey into a dark corner of the internet, and Furie's attempt to reclaim and rebrand his creation. Check out the trailer below.

The movie played at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and the fest's guide described the film like this:

When Matt Furie first created Pepe the Frog, a character in his indie comic Boy's Club, Matt was an easygoing San Francisco artist and Pepe was a chill frog dude. Through a series of unforeseen events and bizarre connections driven by the internet, Pepe came to be a symbol of hate for the far right. How that exactly happened is a wild journey into the heart of online life today and the memeification of our shared collective culture, where the meanings of images change moment to moment and cannot be controlled even by their creators.

Furie decides to fight to take back Pepe from the dark forces that have turned him from a silly comic-book character into their own symbol. But is it already too late? Debut director Arthur Jones takes us through a modern-day saga of the internet that must be seen to be believed or understood. Feels Good Man shows us how a character meant to provide joy and fun can slowly morph into something else—but just maybe can change again.

Filmmaker Arthur Jones makes his directing debut with Feels Good Man, which hails from the same producer and editor as the acclaimed Mr. Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?. It looks like a fascinating exploration of legacy, an artist's relationship to their art, and the insane paths the internet can create in the most unexpected ways. I encourage you to read our full review of the upcoming movie here, which was published before the world pressed pause back in March. According to Ready Fictions, the production company behind the new film, Feels Good Man will be released on September 4, 2020. I suspect it will head straight to VOD, so keep an eye out for it if you're interested.