Superhero movies once ruled the roost in Hollywood, with their success making every studio eager to have their own piece of the pie because they all appeared to be bulletproof at the box office. Over the past five years, they’ve mostly started to falter, resulting in Hollywood starting to look for the next shiny thing. Though at one point it seemed like video game adaptations could be that thing (and they still might be), now the thing that Hollywood is chasing is internet-created horror stories. After the runaway success of Backrooms (plus the Gen-Z-backed Obsession), Hollywood has taken to the internet to find their next big thing, and WB may have found it.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. has come out on top of a massive bidding war to win the rights to a film based on Siren Head, the creation of artist Trevor Henderson that first went viral back in 2018. It’s easy to see not only why Siren Head would attract a following in the late 2010s and even now, it checks a lot of the same boxes for internet horror fans that others like Slender Man, Backrooms, and the SCP Foundation manage as well, with a unqiue lore and creepy imagery that feels like something distinct. What would actually make the Siren Head movie work, though, is that the team set to bring it to life has already proven themselves in the horror space.
The report on the Siren Head movie reveals exactly why five different studios were apparently bidding on the rights, as Weapons and Barbarian director Zach Cregger is attached to not only produce but co-write the script for the film alongside Brian Duffield, known for No One Will Save You and the upcoming Whalefall. Not only will these two genre veterans work on the actual screenplay for Siren Head, but according to THR, the plan is for Duffield to direct as well.
Henderson’s work as an artist is a unique one, taking previously shot photos and images and then adding some kind of bizarre new creation to them. Siren Head is one such example, with Henderson detailing that this “mysterious entity” is actually “a cunning hunter of men, able to blend in with the trees just as well as the urban landscape. Siren Head uses mimicry and audio trickery to isolate and confuse its victims, who are often taken without a trace.” That alone seems like a logline for a movie, so it’s easy to see how this came together.
Hollywood’s immediate obsession with finding new horror from the internet that can be turned into a feature film franchise is something that should surprise no one that’s been paying attention to the business for years. The reality of it, though, is that the built-in audience for these materials may seem like the big draw for a studio, as it makes them assume they’re all going to buy a ticket, it can deliver a downside.
Fans of internet memes and copypasta stories have already decided why they like these things and why they find them appealing and scary, so a film does run the risk of alienating them by honing in on something else or removing the allure and mystique of these works by overexplaining things.
That said, the team that has been put together for the Siren Head movie seems like one that could signal a home run. Cregger has already proven himself in the genre space twice over, with Weapons netting an Oscar for star Amy Madigan, and his upcoming Resident Evil film harkening to what it feels like to actually play a survival horror game. Duffield, as well, has made waves in the horror scene, writing horror epics like 2020’s Underwater and directing the underseen Spontaneous.
Suffice it to say, “the next Backrooms” may seem like an eye-roll-worthy way of framing this new project, but the reality is that it could actually achieve this. Backrooms opened to over $80 million in its opening weekend and has now brought in over $330 million globally, all pulling from a popular YouTube series of the same name. Not only does Siren Head come equipped with fans around the world and lore, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg with the other monsters that Henderson has created.
