A Reddit thread is getting the movie treatment. We’ve all wished for it for some thread or another, but it’s finally happening in the form of English teacher and frequent Redditor Joe Cote’s r/NoSleep horror story “I pretended to be a missing girl so I could rob her family,” which will now be made into a feature film starring Sydney Sweeney.
The Madame Web star is attached to appear in and produce the movie version of the story, which was published on Reddit just over four years ago in November 2020. Through her production company Fifty-Fifty Films, Sweeney brought on writer Eric Roth to pen the script. Roth is best known for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Dune, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Forrest Gump, for which he won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. Alongside Sweeney’s producing power, producers Trevor Engelson and Aaron Folbe from Underground, Steven Schneider from Room 101, and Roy Lee and Mira Yoon from Vertigo will also lend their talents.
As of now, there’s no director attached to the project, but that didn’t stop Warner Bros from recently bidding on the package and ultimately winning the rights to, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cote will executive produce the film, and it stands to reason that if the movie does well, we may see more of the writer’s many stories adapted for the screen.
There have been films made based on Twitter threads — remember 2020’s Zola and 2023’s Dear David? And there have been many independent films based on a Creepypasta story. But this appears to be the first film well and truly based specifically on a Reddit thread. In July 2020, Netflix did buy the rights to Matt Query’s r/NoSleep story “My wife and I bought a ranch,” but as of now, nothing has actually been produced by the streamer. As for the small screen, Screambox has a series called Tales From the Void, an anthology series that turns each episode into its own r/NoSleep story adaptation.
Hopefully, this is the first of many incredible r/Creepypasta and r/NoSleep writers and stories getting their due time on the big screen. The scares are plenty over there; it’s about time someone let them loose.
Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Vanity Fair.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
