“Slender Man,” a blank-faced horror meme that was born on the Internet and used as the inspiration for countless short-story adaptations and a real-life grisly stabbing, may soon extend his long-limbed reach to mainstream movie audiences.
It’s rare for a meme to attract Hollywood’s attention, but three production studios see potential in turning Slender Man into a video game, a TV show, a virtual reality experience or even a (very creepy) doll.
Fans have long awaited the cinematic rise of Slender Man. The character has been the subject of small-budget films before and was recently rumored to be a possible inspiration for “American Horror Story.” But this is the first time that Hollywood is focusing on a meme in the same way it would explore the expansion of, say, a comic book character.
The sinister meme received nationwide attention in 2014 when it was cited as the inspiration for a high-profile crime: two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wis., were accused of stabbing a classmate 19 times. Officials said that act was inspired by a desire to impress Slender Man. Both girls are still awaiting trial.
Continue reading the main storyMythology Entertainment, a production company whose works have included the movies “White House Down” and “Truth,” secured intellectual property rights from the character’s creator, Eric Knudsen. Mythology has partnered with two other studios, Madhouse Entertainment and It Is No Dream Entertainment, to explore TV show and video game possibilities.
And then there’s the movie. Screen Gems, a division of Sony Entertainment, is negotiating with Mythology to produce and distribute a movie based on the horror meme, according to an email from Annalee Paulo, a spokeswoman for the producers. The script is still being written, but the film could begin production as early as this fall.
The movie announcement, though, elicited frustration from some fans online.
“This has got to be one of Hollywood’s most delayed reactions to an Internet fad yet,” one user wrote on Reddit. “This would’ve been an awesome idea financially if they’d had it half a decade ago.”
Another observer wrote, “I definitely think that Slenderman can be scary, but it really depends on what kind of story they tell and how they go about telling it.”
The story of the ghoulish creature is a blank except for a few basics: He has unnaturally long limbs, wears a suit, hangs out in the woods and preys on children. He is said to have originated as a Photoshop creation Mr. Knudsen submitted to an online contest in 2009.
But not all fans believe this is how Slender Man was born. Part of the character’s appeal seems to be his adaptability: Enthusiasts have extended his influence from a meme to horror folklore, claiming to have found clues to his past in ancient cave paintings, hieroglyphics and Germanic fairy tales.
Alternate tales can be found on the Creepypasta Wiki, where writers have adapted his past into numerous iterations. Sometimes, the character appears to be designed to breed paranoia in people who believe that he exists, which has real-world implications: Aside from the 2014 stabbing in Wisconsin, Slender Man has been linked to a handful of other crimes, including the case of a 14-year-old Florida girl who told the police she had set her house on fire after reading about Slender Man online.
After the 2014 stabbing, Mr. Knudsen said in a statement to the news media that he was saddened by the events in Wisconsin. Something Awful, the site that held the contest, also published a blog post titled “Please Do Not Kill Anybody Because of Slenderman.”
“He was especially terrifying to the people who try hard to be afraid of things and help each other succeed,” the post read, adding that the character was “the Internet’s dire equivalent of a collective Ouija board party.”
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