Warner Bros. to adapt Reddit post about missing girl — Sidney Sweeney stars in the title role

One Reddit post became so popular that Warner Bros. is planning to make a movie based on it.

The story in question was first posted on r/nosleep — a subreddit known for its creepypastasThe word comes from the term «copypasta» — blocks of text that are so memorable that they are copied and shared on social media, making them memes, i.e. creepy first-person stories that are shared as if they were real — which told the story of a girl who pretended to be a child who disappeared 10 years ago in order to make money from her family.

The plot of the creepypasta is somewhat reminiscent of the 2009 psychological horror «Child of Darkness», in which a married couple who have recently lost a baby mistakes a nine-year-old girl with a mysterious past for their daughter, who turns out to be not so sweet and innocent.

According to Hollywood Reporter, the studio has already acquired the film rights and secured the lead role for Sydney Sweeney — star of «Euphoria» and romantic comedy «I love to hate you»while the screenplay was written by Oscar-winner Eric Roth, known for his work on «Forest Gump», «The Curious Case of Benjamin Button» and «Dune».

Business Insider clarifies that the story was posted on Reddit by Massachusetts English teacher Joe Coate, who was first contacted by Hollywood producers last year.

Adapting stories from the Internet is not new for Hollywood: in 2018, Sylvain White released the horror film «Slenderman», based on a character created by a member of the Something Awful online forum: and two years after that, A24’s black crime comedy «Cinder» was released, which referred to a viral story of a stripper posted on Twitter. A few years ago, Ryan Reynolds tried to produce another story from r/nosleep, about a doctor and a strange patient, but the project was eventually canceled.