There are many instances of films and television stories aging in strangely accurate ways.
The Simpsons has famously predicted the future many times, with some things including smartwatches and video calls.
However, time has revealed that they weren’t the only ones who were ahead of their time.
Film News Blitz writer Jesse-Ann Baron reveals the TV and films that predicted the future and actually got it right.
The Truman Show (1998)
The classic Jim Carrey film predicted the world’s upcoming fascination with unscripted 24/7 observation of humans.
This was released one year before Big Brother graced TV and almost ten years before the Kardashians became a hit reality show.
The Truman Show fits the present as privacy is commodified and products are placed in reality TV but disguised as organic life.
Contagion (2011)
The film depicts the dynamics of a global pandemic and is shockingly similar to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Director Steven Soderbergh, with help from epidemiologists, mapped out so accurately what would happen if a global pandemic hit that some could take it as a documentary.
Contagion accurately shows the vaccine distribution rushes, the social distancing, the viral misinformation of miracle cures on the internet, societal panic-buying and the global spread via air travel.
Her (2013)
Originally, this film was ridiculed for its ridiculous plot because no one then could imagine a human falling in love with an Artificial Intelligence.
Fast forward to the 2020s, there are many stories of people having romantic relationships with personalised AI assistants with generative AI audio and conversational user interfaces.
Some have even married their artificial partners, and others have, funnily enough, broken up real human relationships, so perhaps Her was far from fiction after all.
The Simpsons
This series is a classic comedic cartoon, but it’s also famous for its spooky foresight.
They had featured characters speaking into watches way before smartwatches came out and it even predicted Lady Gaga would do the Super Bowl halftime show.
But some of the show’s more remarkable predictions include joking that Donald Trump would be president and showing a billboard with 20th Century Fox being bought by Disney.
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Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
In the popular Star Trek series, much of the advanced technology depicted in the show is now part of our everyday lives.
The show had touchscreen tablets, flip phones when they were still massive bricks, and a voice assistant before Siri entered many homes.
Additionally, if characters couldn’t understand someone in the show, they would use a universal translator, which in 2026 is a familiar technology.
Parks and Recreation
This funny series accurately predicted that VR headsets would be a widespread consumer product in its last season.
It is not far off from today, with virtual reality headsets becoming more popular and more accessible to the public.
Not only did the show predict this, but it also featured predictions like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series and a man winning a woman’s award, which mirrors Bono winning Women of the Year in 2016.
Do film and TV know the future?
Both film and TV have a long track record of consistently predicting the future – but is it purely coincidence?
There are many conspiracies out there, but maybe the reason why they get it right so often is that creatives are more aware of the world since they are inspecting it constantly.
They observe the world and replicate true emotions and moments that either make us laugh, cry or think – so maybe it isn’t all that strange that the artists of the world know what’s coming.
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