From the forums of Something Awful to the big screens, here comes Slender Man! That’s an origin story that’s yet to be told by Hollywood’s perpetual origin story-telling machine, but, thankfully, it’s one that’s being told now. Production company Mythology Entertainment already holds the rights to Slender Man and is working on partnering up to make a full-length feature a reality, though it’s weird to think about how they negotiated the rights for a thing created as a lark on the forum.
The creature — which is simply a besuited man with a pale, featureless face — was created by Eric Knudsen in 2009, and from there became a weird-net phenomenon, particularly for the young folks. It all began as part of a photoshopping contest, which is a thing popular on message boards, and it blew up from there, dominating Tumblr and YouTube and eventually leading to a tragic stabbing in 2014. Though, the stabbing wasn’t to kill Slender Man, but, allegedly, to impress Slender Man, which elevates the already horrendous crime to a new level of creepiness. Especially because the character is said to abduct children, and these were two children committing the crime.
Anyway, no word as to what direction the film is set to take: will it be about a version of our world in which an actual Slender Man exists, or will it be about the chaos caused by the fictional character? We’ll find out soon.
For now, watch this handy educational video put together by ABC News.