The inevitable film based on the unstoppable creepypasta meme Slenderman (or Slender Man, if you like) has taken a big step forward, landing a director to co-ordinate the long-limbed, faceless but incredibly dapper creeper.
Deadline reports that Sylvain White has been brought on by Screen Gems to direct Slender Man. White is probably best known as the director of 2010’s underrated (yes, underrated) comic book action movie The Losers, which starred Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba and Chris Evans. Or you may know him as the director of 2006’s I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, but hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere.
Recently, he’s been working in TV on shows like Hawaii 5-0, MacGuyver and Sleepy Hollow. This will be his first feature since The Losers.
If you don’t know what Slenderman is, he’s a mysterious figure who appears in the background of black and white photos to bring serious chills to people who are up too late on the internet, born out of a Something Awful photoshop contest and created by Eric Knudsen, who wrote some deeply creepy captions to go with his haunting images.
As per Deadline, he’s “a tall, thin horrifying figure with unnaturally long arms and a featureless face, who is reputed to be responsible for the haunting and disappearance of countless children and teens.”
The script is written by David Birke, whose interesting CV includes kind-of-nifty, definitely-nasty genre thriller 13 Sins (starring Mark Webber and Ron Perlman), and Paul Verhoeven’s acclaimed revenge movie Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert.
While our comment about people staying up too late on the internet may sound like we’re not taking Slenderman entirely seriously, it’s a genuinely creepy figure that has become a bona fide phenomenon. If you’re in any doubt, there’s the upcoming HBO documentary Beware The Slenderman, which focuses on the real life case of two girls who tried to murder one of their friends to “appease” the Slenderman. Which is a pretty terrifying thing.
Slender Man is set to go into production “by the spring” so we can expect to hear casting news soon. We’re assuming Doug Jones and Javier Botet are awaiting the call.
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