2026’s Most Surprising and Hilarious Time Travel Movie Finally Confirms Streaming Date (With an Extra Surprise)
If you’ve been paying attention to media trends in recent months, you already know that the big screen is taking a lot of inspiration from the small screen. On the horror side of things Backrooms, based on the web series of the same name, was a box office hit and there have been plenty of announcements of other such adaptations in the pipeline but it isn’t just horror that is making the leap in 2026. Comedy and sci-fi are doing the same, giving us one of the most surprising and hilarious time travel adventures since Bill & Ted’s and now, it’s leaping back to the small screen as it arrives on streaming but with a twist.
Landing on Hulu on July 24th is Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. Released back in February, the Canadian comedy may not have been a box office juggernaut but it’s one of the funniest time travel movies in years, earning a rare set of praise on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96% Tomatometer and a 95% Popcornmeter. The film, written by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, is an adaptation of their 2017 television series of the same name which is, in turn, an adaptation of their 2007 web series and follows the pair who, while attempting to book a music gig at the Rivoli in Toronto accidentally end up being sent back in time to 2008. While the movie arriving on streaming is exciting, that’s not the best part: the two, 8-episode seasons of Nirvanna The Band The Show are also hitting Hulu making them available to stream in the U.S. for the first time.
Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is a Low-Budget Love Letter to Back to the Future (And It’s Hilarious)
While we usually think about time travel as being a more serious sci-fi convention—there are, after all, plenty of more serious movies and dramas that utilize the concept and its perils as major plot elements—it actually pairs brilliantly with a more comedic approach. The Bill & Ted franchise is a prime example of this with 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, but perhaps the greatest example of time travel sci-fi being funny is the Back to the Future films and the influence of 1985’s Back to the Future is clear with Nirvanna The Band the Show. The film functions as a parody of the classic but does so in the most inventive way possible.
What makes Nirvanna the Band The Show so fascinating is that it uses the television series and its web series predecessor to fully craft a unique time travel story of its own. Let me explain. The television series and web series are themselves not based around time travel. Instead, they’re a mocumentary sitcom of sorts that follows the fictional versions of Johnson and McCarrol trying to land a gig at the Rivoli despite having never written or recorded a single song or even really done the work to reach out to the venue. That alone is funny, especially when paired with various homages to the ‘90s and pop culture. The movie, however, takes the fake band’s efforts to a different level with the incorporation of the time travel element, which came about thanks to McCarrol pitching that the film should be a parody of some of the biggest movies of all time combined with the existence of unused footage from the 2007-2009 web series that featured McCarroll and Johnson as younger men. Pair it together and an extremely meta, heartfelt parody is both unique and a love letter to the iconic film—and it’s not to be missed.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Nirvanna the Band the Show and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie both hit Hulu on August 7th.
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