In less than 24 hours Warner Bros. and Amazon have bought rights to two creepypasta terrors

On July 1, Warner Bros. Pictures won a bid among five studios for the rights to Siren Head, a viral siren-headed creature (the firefighter’s alarm, not the mythological creature) created by Canadian designer Trevor Henderson. A day later, Amazon MGM Studios, United Artists and Amblin Entertainment have closed a similar agreement for ‘The Mandela Catalogue’, a YouTube analogue horror series created by Alex Kister, after a bid between eleven studios. Neither film has a finished script or shooting date. But there is something in the environment that has led them to the purchase.

Siren head. Zach Cregger, director of ‘Weapons’, will write the script for ‘Siren Head’ with Brian Duffieldwho will also direct it; Henderson, the character’s creator, is not involved in the production. The agreement required theatrical release as a condition for bidding, which has left out the large streaming platforms. streaming. Sony, Universal, Paramount and 20th Century Studios competed for the package before Warner took it for a seven-figure sum for the rights alone (that is, regardless of the cost of the film).

But what is it? Siren Head is a humanoid being about twelve meters tall with two metallic sirens instead of heads, capable of imitating voices and sounds to attract its victims. Henderson published it for the first time in 2018 on Tumblr and Twitter. Its design refers directly to Slender Manthe creature that founded the genre creepypasta more than a decade before. The subsequent coverage of YouTubers such as PewDiePie or Markiplier in 2020 multiplied its reach.

Unlike usual in this type of horrors creepypasta (very young and amateur creators), Henderson has already worked with major studios: he designed, for example, the nine monsters of ‘Tarot’, the 2024 Sony film produced by Scott Glassgold, one of the producers who is now repeating in ‘Siren Head’. Which makes it even more curious that Henderson is not going to participate creatively in the adaptation of his creature.

Mandela Catalog. ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ follows a different pattern. Alex Kister, who created the series in 2021 at the age of seventeen, will direct the adaptation and will co-write the script with Tyler Clifton. Clearly the same scheme is being followed that worked so well with ‘Backrooms‘: the original creator is in control of the film, without intermediaries to reinterpret the material.

‘The Mandela Catalogue’ is a piece of analog horror, a subgenre that imitates television broadcasts and VHS tapes from the turn of the last century, popularized by the series ‘Local 58′ in 2015. Kister uploaded the first episode in June 2021 and the plot takes place in the fictional Mandela County, invaded by doubles called “alternates” who push their victims to suicide and manipulate television, radio and GPS; Its origin is attributed to a corrupted version of the archangel Gabriel.

Creepypastas in cinema: origins. ‘Backrooms’, directed by Kane Parsons from his own YouTube series, premiered on May 29, and grossed $81.4 million in its opening weekend in the United States from a budget of about $10 million. A round business. One month later, world collection It exceeded 330 million. ‘Obsession’, also horror, not inspired by a creepypasta But it has also been directed by a YouTube creator, Curry Barker, and has earned 374 million worldwide.

Both figures have convinced studios that horror born on YouTube and Reddit can replace traditional franchises to attract an audience under 25 years of age who increasingly goes less and less to watch superheroes or youth sagas. That public It had been the most difficult to recover for years for theaters, and ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ are the first cases in which Hollywood feels that it has found a new vein. According to that same article, at least one representation agency has its employees combing subreddits for adaptable stories. An agency veteran acknowledged that they had already located “a handful” of threads with film potential.

Qunflattering records. The last time Hollywood undertook such a maneuver—extrapolating the surface characteristics of a sleeper hit and churning out related movies like there was no tomorrow—it went so well. We are talking, of course, about ‘Barbie’: Amazon and Mattel They tried to apply the formula of toy origin, ironic tone and search for various sectors of the public to ‘Masters of the Universe‘. As we know, things did not work: the audience that filled the theaters was 68% male (as expected) and the collections fell by 70% in its second weekend. Mattel Films has been active for eight years and has only produced these two films.

Although in many cases, in the cinema, the first to arrive is the one that takes the lead and the culture of exploitation is firmly established even among the culture of the big production companies, it is usually not a good idea to throw bunches of bills at projects that were not born organically, but in executive offices. The good part of all this? A couple of new and good looking horror movies. If they don’t work we will have time to cry. Again.

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