So, if you’ve got a particularly good memory, you probably remember that sometime in January, Screen Gems dropped a trailer for Slender Man, their copyright-skirting adaptation of the creepypasta/urban legend that’s scared children of all ages (and put one in the hospital). This is, of course, the beginning of the deluge, as having catered to the Nerds for so long, Hollywood now wants to grab internet culture by the balls. Hell, we’ll probably see a Fortnite movie within three or four years directed by one of the John Wick guys. After months without hearing any word from the production, the distributor released a second, less vague preview for it today, and boy, does it look pretty bad.
Take a look:
Well, hey, at least Joey King is getting a nice paycheck for being in this one!
Look, Sony, if you’re going to keep on optioning internet fads — and trust us, we know a good fad when we see one, being your target audience, you know, m-i-l-l-e-n-i-a-l-s — that sit pretty comfortably in the public domain, might we recommend this classic of horror literature?
“So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is “wut r u doing wit my daughter?” U tell ur girl n she say “my dad is ded”. THEN WHO WAS PHONE?”
Give us a $5 million budget and 20 cases of Milwaukee’s Best, and we’ll have something for you that’ll look as good as this does. You won’t even have to shuffle around the release date a ton or try to sell it to another studio in order to prevent it from being a big black mark on your books!
Anyways, Slender Man hits theaters on August 10. We’ll be there, but we won’t be happy about it.
Featured image via Screen Gems.