This Cult 15-Year-Old Series Is The Greatest Cinematic Universe You've Never Heard Of

Published Oct 11, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

George is a film critic and journalist with over nine years of experience in the entertainment industry. Beginning as the Co-Creator and Co-Editor of Star Wars Holocron, the most followed Star Wars fan account on Twitter/X, George went on to develop The HoloFiles, a movie and television-focused website with his brother and writing partner Josh.

A member of the Hollywood Creative Alliance, Chicago Indie Critics, Online Film and Television Association, and the Internet Film Critic Society, George has covered major industry events as credentialed media, including D23, CinemaCon, SXSW, Fantastic Fest, Star Wars Celebration, Tribeca Festival, and more. He also regularly writes reviews and contributes articles to ScreenAnarchy, BRWC, Film Obsessive, TV Obsessive, and Under the Radar. George's work has been featured in various esteemed publications, including the BBC, Associated Press, Forbes, and The New York Times.

With the mammoth success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hollywood has become fascinated with creating cinematic universes that replicate the success of Disney and Marvel Studios’ sprawling franchise. A handful of these attempts, such as The Conjuring Universe and Monsterverse, have been successful, while others, such as the DC Extended Universe, Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe, and Sony Pictures’ The Amazing Spider-Man Universe either yielded mixed results or fell apart before they even began.

As evidenced by their mixed track record in recent years, cinematic universes are difficult to pull off. However, if they are done right, there’s quite a bit for audiences to enjoy. Cinematic universes uniquely blend serialized storytelling and immersive worldbuilding, allowing characters from separate standalone stories to meet, clash, or team up.

The more expansive storytelling form allows lore, history, and secondary characters room to breathe, in turn making the universe feel lived-in and vast. It also allows narrative threads, subplots, Easter eggs, and more to pay off years after they were initially teased, which rewards dedicated viewers who have stuck around for so long.

While most attempts at pulling off a compelling cinematic franchise that rivals the acclaim of the MCU have stumbled, there is a cult collective of series and films that comprise the greatest cinematic universe you’ve never heard of.

What Is On Cinema At The Cinema?

Courtesy of Adult Swim and HEI Network

On Cinema at the Cinema is a hilarious, intricately engineered, and mind-boggling cinematic universe that began back in February 2012 as a podcast before becoming a series in 2013. Hosted by Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, the show becomes as a subtle parody of film review shows, such as Siskel & Ebert, although the wild twists and turns it takes finds the series constantly reinventing itself over the years.

Heidecker and Turkington play fictionalized versions of themselves. The former is an egotistical, erratic host of a movie review show who appears to have no interest in movies and doesn’t seem to watch any of the movies he talks about. Instead, he is perpetually distracted by unusual health crises, strange family conflicts, and questionable business ventures. Turkington, meanwhile, is a self-proclaimed ‘film buff,’ obsessing over VHS runtimes and pointless trivia, rather than actually having anything even moderately of substance to say about the movies they review.

Naturally, the conflicting personalities and interests of Heidecker and Turkington lead to all manner of conflict on the show, which starts slowly before it steadily ramps up the bizarre. Over the course of 16 regular seasons, live annual Oscar Specials, a full-length mockumentary, a spin-off series, and even a nearly five-hour courtroom trial, On Cinema at the Cinema grew from a micro movie review show to one of the best cinematic universes out there.

On Cinema At The Cinema Has Worldbuilding And Character Arcs That Rival Any Cinematic Universe

Courtesy of Adult Swim and HEI Network

While On Cinema at the Cinema has continued to be the consistent foundation from which stories in the On Cinema universe spawn from, Heidecker and Turkington’s work has expanded to all manner of different stories across a range of different mediums.

The first expansion into cinematic universe territory came in the form of Decker, a show within a show that finds brilliance in just how painfully and awkwardly bad it is. In the On Cinema universe, Heidecker fashions himself a movie star, not unlike Tom Cruise, and launches a television series called Decker.

The series follows an overly confident secret agent who works for the U.S. government to quell terrorist threats around the world. While Heidecker thinks the show is a prestige work of art, Decker is anything but; microbudget, hilariously poor visual effects, nonsensical plots, and some of the worst acting ever put to screen render it an enthralling show within a show.

A testament to the sheer scale of the On Cinema universe, Decker has 47 regular episodes and three specials across six seasons, in addition to an animated pilot and a short film/retrospective. Decker runs concurrently to On Cinema at the Cinema, where Tim and Gregg frequently clash about the direction the espionage series is heading in.

Each season of On Cinema at the Cinema is punctuated by an annual On Cinema Oscar Specials, chaotic 3+ hour specials that were recorded and aired live during each year’s Academy Awards. The Oscar Specials are the pinnacle of what the On Cinema Universe has to offer as they essentially serve as ambitious season finale marked by catastrophic tech failures, severe physical injuries, substance use and random musical numbers from Tim, and increasingly desperate and poorly conceived movie segments from Gregg.

In 2017, the On Cinema Universe embarked on its most ambitious feat yet with The Trial of Tim Heidecker. This was a groundbreaking, five-hour mock legal drama that covered the criminal trial of the fictional version of Tim Heidecker after he was prosecuted for the manslaughter of 20 people.

Then, in 2019, the On Cinema Universe expanded into movie theaters with the release of a feature-length mockumentary film called Mister America, which follows TIm’s delusional, aggressive, and highly unqualified political campaign as he runs for District Attorney of San Bernardino County.

Several years later, the On Cinema Universe became even more immersive with the creation of the HEI Network, a streaming service that has since become the platform for all On Cinema content. In the real world, the HEI Network was born out of economic necessity as, following the COVID-19 pandemic, Adult Swim closed its digital-video and streaming divisions, effectively putting an end to On Cinema at the Cinema. Rather than let the show die, Heidecker and Turkington went fully independent, launching a direct-to-consumer subscription service.

To this day, the On Cinema Universe continues with new seasons of On Cinema at the Cinema each year, in addition to various shorts and spin-off shows, including a conspiracy-theory parody called Xposed and a lifestyle/reality show called Rock House.

Step-By-Step Guide To Start Following On Cinema At The Cinema

Courtesy of Adult Swim and HEI Network.

If beginning to dip your toes in the world of On Cinema seems overwhelming, hang tight, because there are a number of entry points for those interested in following Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s bizarre cinematic universe.

Completionists will want to start with season 1 of On Cinema at the Cinema, which is available on the HEI Network, alongside every other installment of the On Cinema Universe. These early seasons are also available for free in their entirety on YouTube, as are episodes of Decker and various Oscar Specials. Simply subscribe to HEI Network and get lost in the wild minds of Heidecker and Turkington.

Those who don’t wish to embark on the full journey of On Cinema can find an entry point with any of the Oscar Specials, in particular the latter ones. While many of the jokes and awkwardness may lack context, the Oscar Specials perfectly encapsulate the particular brand of eccentricity and chaos of On Cinema.

Going under the radar as the MCU has thrived into the biggest franchise of all time, On Cinema has proven that Disney and Marvel Studios do not have the monopoly over sprawling, expansive, and captivating cinematic universes.

On Cinema

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  Gregg Turkington

  Gregg Turkington

• Joe Estevez

  President Davidson

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  Tim Heidecker

  Tim Heidecker

• Manuel Giusti

  Manuel Giusti