Miles Scott is one inspiring kid. The 6-year-old cancer survivor became a viral sensation when the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted his wish to be Batkid and his entire community in San Francisco helped to make him a superhero for a day in the Foundation’s most elaborate wish-granting project to date.
On November 15, 2013, the adorable Miles dressed as Batkid and San Franciscans came out in droves to watch him “save their metropolis.” He stopped a pseudo bank robbery, saved a damsel in distress and drove in a Batmobile on the shut-down streets of San Francisco. As if that weren’t enough, he also rescued the San Francisco Giants’ mascot Lou Seal and received a key to the city from Mayor Ed Lee. When Miles got the wish of a lifetime, the story of Batkid went viral.
Now, thanks to Warner Bros. and director Dana Nachman, Miles’ story has been brought to life on screen.
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Batkid Begins chronicles the social media sensation that surrounded what should have been a small Make-A-Wish assignment for its local San Francisco chapter, but turned into a national news story.
Miles, who was first diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia when he was just 18 months old, went through years of chemotherapy treatments before finally beating the disease. But unlike most kids, whose Make-A-Wish usually entails a trip to Disney Land during a break in their hospital stay, Scott and his family decided to save their wish for when the little boy could finally be done with needles, tests and visits to the ICU.
“This was the end of a really horrible chapter for Miles and his whole family, not the end of his life,” Nachman said of the Scott family’s choice.
If the end of chemo marked the final chapter in Scott’s battle with leukemia, his journey with the Make-A-Wish Foundation was the beginning of the story of his new cancer-free life. The new documentary gives audiences a look into the dedication of the people involved in making Scott’s wish come true and the domino effect his story had on social media.
“It’s one thing if your goal is to make a viral video or to make a huge flash mob, but it’s another thing if your goal is to have a pretty modest amount of people and then it blows up,” Nachman said of tackling the film. “I was interested in why and how it blew up like that.”
To give you an idea of exactly how big Scott’s Batkid day was, there were approximately 406,960 tweets on the day of the event, using either the #batkid or #SFBatkid hashtag on Twitter. Between 750 million-1.7 billion people worldwide heard about Batkid’s story and the event ushered in so much traffic to the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s website that it ended up crashing the day of the event. Celebrities like Ben Affleck and Christian Bale (who’ve both worn the suit on the big screen) tweeted out their support to the young hero and even the President of the United States filmed a message to Scott to commemorate the day.
But according to Nachman, the story wasn’t really about Batkid to begin with.
“The story to me isn’t about Miles. Miles is the catalyst for the story because he had this amazing wish, but the story is really about the community coming together for this little boy. So to me, it became obvious early on that that was the story I wanted to tell. What these people did was just so positive.”
That’s the joy of reliving this event through Nachman’s documentary lens. The opportunity to see people of all ages and backgrounds coming together, either on the ground in San Francisco or online isn’t something that happens too often.
Scott was able to let people, complete strangers, become a kid again for a day and, according to Nachman, his story was able to highlight the positive power of social media.
“Social media has this amazing potential. I wish there could be more days like this day. It gives us a great snapshot into what we’re capable of on social media.
Warner Bros. has optioned the documentary for a feature film, one Nachman will be helping to produce and which Julia Roberts is currently attached to star in, but for right now, the director’s goal is to inspire as many people as possible through the true story of Scott’s imagination and courage.
“We just want the spirit of that day to live on.”
Batkid Begins is in theaters now.
Find out more about one of Guideposts.org’s sponsors: Cancer Treatment Centers of America
