The Hillywood Show's Star Wars Parody Gave the Show an Opportunity to Do Something It's Never Done Before—And It Led To One of It's Best Parodies Yet

Created by sisters Hilly and Hannah Hindi, The Hillywood Show has been a staple of the parody and comedy world since 2006. Their first parody to hit big was a Twilight-focused one, released in 2009 on their YouTube Channel. That video has now reached over 17 million views.

Since then, The Hillywood Show has created countless more parodies, each pulling in massive audiences and fans. Some other projects spoofed by the sisters include The Vampire Diaries, Harry Potter (which might be due for another parody soon, thanks to the upcoming HBO Max series), The Hunger Games, The Suicide Squad, Supernatural, The Lord of the Rings, and more.

Most recently, The Hillywood Show tackled Star Wars, a franchise fresh in everyone's mind thanks to The Mandalorian and Grogu, and also one that has been a highly anticipated target for the parody team.

The Direct sat down with stars Hilly Hindi and Matt Cohen, who played Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, respectively, in the parody, to talk about how their Star Wars parody allowed them to reach a production scale the channel has never seen before.

The Hillywood Show Gets The Volume Miracle

"That Was a Blessing That Fell Into My Lap."

• The Direct: "You used The Volume for this Star Wars parody. What was it like working with that technology?

Hilly Hindi: Amazing. That was a blessing that fell into my lap. We used to film at a studio here in Las Vegas, and that studio unfortunately closed. I think it was a little bit pre-COVID that it closed, and so we were searching. We're like, 'Oh my God, we need a new studio to film in because we don't have our own studio. We're not that cool.' So we were searching, where can we film? Like, where can we go? Where can we even put up sets? And we were just thinking about the next parody. We weren't 100% sure which one we were gonna do.

The whole situation came about thanks to Hindi's search for a new studio to film their upcoming Star Wars parody.

Hindi: We kind of had these two ideas, but you know, how can you make a Star Wars parody possible? I got a call from a guy named Chuck Aiken, and Chuck goes, 'Hey, I have this new studio. Do you want to stop by and take a tour?' And I was like, 'Sure.' And Chuck was like, 'Oh, I worked at the one that just closed,' the one I just mentioned, and I go, 'Okay, sounds good.'

When she walked into this new studio, "The Volume was right there," but her first thought was that the technology wasn't something with Hillywood's budget:

Hindi: So we go, and The Volume was right there, and it was very much like, oh, this is beautiful to look at, but this is not in Hillywood's budget because if you didn't know, for us, Hillywood is 100% fan funded. We're on on Patreon since 2015. So, as you can imagine, walking into a Hollywood studio. I was like, a girl can dream, right? Like that was nice.

Despite The Volume usually not being something in The Hillywood Show's budget, Hindi's new contact was adamant about supporting her project:

Hindi: And as I was leaving, I told him thank you, and maybe someday. And he's like, What do you mean someday? He's like, you could film here, we could talk about it. I was like, how? Because I'm on Patreon. We don't have to do. I'm not—Yeah, I'm not Hollywood. I'm Hillywood. And he was like, 'No, I really want to support your next project. Like, we'll make it work. We'll make it work somehow. We'll just make it work.' And that was a miracle. So there you go.

• The Direct: "Matt, have you used the volume before?"

Matt Cohen: I have not, and dude, the director guy in me was so excited to just see how it worked, just to see how any of that was really going to look on camera, and it was awesome and so so uniquely creative in its own right. I know it's just a big screen essentially, but what you're able to do film-wise and create environments is just so cool.

Cohen made it clear that he's a big fan of The Volume technology and everything it can offer actors and filmmakers:

Cohen: It is like I just want to live in there and create a different environment. Like living in Antarctica one day, living in the desert another day. You know, you really can make anything happen. It's just, you walk in sets sometimes as an actor, and let's say it's a green screen wall and one wall art decorated, and you're like, all right, let me pretend I'm on a pirate ship. But then you get a set like The Volume, and you put a pirate ship set there, and you feel like you're engulfed in a pirate ship.

"You can just press a couple of buttons, and all of a sudden it's someplace else," he said:

Cohen: It really puts you in the moment and puts you in the character. And there's no more awesome thing to experience as like a geeky filmmaker than a set like that, because you can just press a couple of buttons, and all of a sudden it's someplace else. You can light the foreground, place props in the foreground, and it stacks on top of the screen, and it just looks incredible. So yeah, I could go on all day about how geeky I am for it. It's amazing.

An Important AI Warning From The Hillywood Show

Under No Circumstances Did They Want People to Assume Anything Was AI

• The Direct: "Seeing the AI warning at the start, I'm wondering, when making something like this, how prevalent is that kind of thought? Are people going to think this is fake, or like, how much did you have to assure people?"

Hilly Hindi: We filmed in February through March slash April of 2025, and even then, like AI was very obvious that it was AI, so we weren't even thinking about it. By the time this dropped just a [year] from then, I was going, oh, like AI was really moving quickly, and the last thing I wanted was for people to watch and go, oh, that's probably AI, and not really look into the hard work that all these individuals put into it from the set designers and the costumers and the editing and the graphics and like all the things that we did practically...

As for the warning itself, Hindi wanted it "to kind of feel like a Disneyland ride where we're all getting prepped:"

Hindi:  I knew from the start that I had to tell them something because I could just see the top comments. Ah, this is AI, and I was like, no. I decided to do it in a creative way. I wanted it to kind of feel like a Disneyland ride where we're all getting prepped, and that's how I was able to put out the AI, no AI beyond this point, and we try to be creative with it. It was a lot of fun.

What Is Hilly Hindi up To Next?

"I Want Hill to Make a Feature-Length Project."

• The Direct: "What parody is next now? What's next on the docket?"

Matt Cohen: I'll tell you exactly what I want Hilly to do, and she doesn't want me to say this right now, but I want Hilly to make a feature-length project, and the only pitch that I have right now, which is kind of a you know a fun pitch I made up on the moment, is that Hilly plays a character that jumps across several parodies, like five or six parodies in an hour and a half project. But she commits to this one character just traveling through these different universes... almost kind of like one of those kind of across the universe style.

For Hindi, she's currently focusing on a much-deserved rest.

Hilly Hindi: Right now my mind is on a little bit of a vacay [and] just enjoying. This is like one of my favorite parts, seeing the reactions to the parody and hearing from the fans. They've waited so long for this piece, and this is like where I just get to sit and feel the joy and the love and the support from everybody. But at the same time, my mind's already moving, and that's why I'm so hoping that I can find— There are like different avenues here.

Though Hindi revealed that eventually, she's "aiming maybe towards an original film [or] short film:"

Hindi: Like we obviously, like how Matt says, I'm obviously aiming maybe towards an original film [or] short film... I do want to try to get the Hillywood Show, possibly a little bit more serious, maybe a series, because there are a lot of things I'd love to do. I would have loved this Halloween to do something like on 'Obsession,' like that would have been really cool, but because I'm on Patreon, it takes a while to save up the funds to be able to produce.

She also wants to build a close team to help realize her creative goals and dreams:

Hindi: There are so many things that I want to do, but I just need to figure it out and say, 'Okay, how can we do this?' And I am solo in this, so maybe build a team. But with that, you know, you have to make sure they're financially supported. So until I meet that, there are a lot of things to think about. But it's all possible. It's just a matter of getting the guidance and the help and going step by step. But I think I'm going in the right direction, and that's exciting to me.

The full Star Wars Hillywood Show parody is available below: