HBO just announced that their shocking true crime documentary Beware the Slenderman will premiere on Monday, January 23, but Slendy’s reign of terror is only just beginning. According to Deadline, Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard, The Losers) is set to direct the horrorific Slender Man movie for Screen Gems, with production to begin in the spring.
For the uninitiated, Slender Man (also known as Slenderman) is a fictitious character/creepypasta meme of an abnormally tall, faceless man with long arms who stalks and abducts children. In 2014, he inspired real-life horror as two 12-year-old American girls in Wisconsin lured a friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in an effort to “appease” the fictional entity.
Slenderman was created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (alias “Victor Surge”) as part of a 2009 Photoshop contest, shown lurking behind children in two black-and-white photos. His mythology expanded and spread, seen alternately as a malevolent figure and a guardian angel, spawning fan fiction, artwork, games, videos and several low budget feature films. Movies based around the Slenderman myth include Windigo (2011), Hylo (2012), Proxy (2012), Entity (2013) and Always Watching (2015), the latter featuring Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) as the creature.
Mythology Entertainment’s Bradley Fischer, James Vanderbilt and William Sherak are producing Slender Man alongside Madhouse’s Robyn Meisinger and No Dream’s Sarah Snow. David Birke, who wrote Paul Verhoeven’s outstanding thriller Elle, is penning the script.
