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Has a viral Twitter thread ever been turned into a movie? I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but the “Dear David” Twitter phenomenon just landed a movie deal. And it’s going to be called, what else? Dear David!
Let’s briefly recap what happened to inspire the movie and what we know about when we might get to watch it.
The Dear David Saga
In 2017, then-Buzzfeed author and illustrator Adam Ellis captured the image of a ghost child in his New York City apartment. It sparked the first of his many spine-tingling tweets, which was, “My apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he’s trying to kill me.”
Well, that’s certainly compelling. But it was just the beginning.
Ellis documented his haunting on Twitter with the hashtag #DearDavid. Fourteen million people followed his Tweets. They all wanted answers about the little boy who’d invaded Ellis’ life. In a way, it was sort of like a real-life, real-time Paranormal Activity movie playing out.
For months, he documented all kinds of strange phenomenon, everything from horribly vivid nightmares to sounds in the middle of the night that he recorded while he slept. At one point his whole apartment even shook like it was being rattled by an earthquake.
Fangoria summed up some of the other phenomenon, which included Ellis being led “…to a physical abandoned warehouse, strange phone calls, Japan, unsettling nanny cam footage, weird items stashed in a crawlspace, and this is only a small fraction of it.”
Trending Fear
Ellis’ Dear David experience also landed him a show, Trending Fear, the first season of which premiered on Travel Channel on December 20, 2019.
I haven’t heard yet if another season is eventually coming or not. Perhaps the epidemic put the kibosh on it? I don’t know, but the premise of Trending Fear was that Ellis, along with Jen Lewis (researcher/documentarian) and Paul Bradford (ghost hunter and lead investigator), would travel America –from Oregon to Massachusetts– hoping to help people take back their lives after unexplainable encounters with the paranormal.
They were also going to use social media to “crowdsource” stories and get theories and present evidence on each case.
The Dear David Movie
John McPhail (Anna and the Apocalypse) will direct the Dear David movie adaptation. Mike Van Waes (The Crooked Man) will write the screenplay. No word on who will play Ellis or David yet.
Deadline reported its “shooting imminently,” which means we may be able to see it as soon as next year. Maybe in time for next Halloween season?
Check-In
In the Fangoria piece about the Dear David movie, article author Angel Melanson brought up a super interesting point when she wrote, “One can’t help but wonder what sort of things we might have read if Twitter had existed during some of history’s most notorious hauntings— a Twitter thread from a member of the Perron family perhaps, or maybe a social media account belonging to a sibling of someone possibly in need of an exorcism?”
Mind blown! Which famous haunting do you think would’ve made a great Twitter thread?
Some that came to my mind were the Amityville horror, the Bell Witch, and the Enfield Haunting. But I’d love to know your thoughts!
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.
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I think a haunted theater like the Palace Theater in LA or the Ford Center in Chicago would have made a good Twitter thread because ALL those audience members mean a lot of witnesses and a lot of possible Tweets. Who knows? Maybe there is still paranormal activity in those particular theaters, and we may yet see a Twitter thread about them.
The Hoosac Tunnel in North Adams, Ma. Where many died when building the tunnel.
Oooo! I’m so glad you answered. I always appreciate all of your comments but never expect them. But I do hope that there are some you will answer because I know that creative mind of yours will have such a good answer. This was one of those times so thank you so very much! You did not disappoint. This would be SO cool! In fact, you may have just sparked a short story idea! lol
Oh my! That would potentially be a super scary one too. I had to read up on it because I wasn’t familiar with it, but I quickly learned it’s nickname was the Bloody Pit because of how many died building it. Yikes! GREAT one! THANK YOU for commenting because I learned of something new in the process too!