Hollywood has spent years picking through message boards and wikis for the next horror franchise.
Now it's going straight to the source. Tongal, the creator-led studio, and filmmaker Savanah Moss are partnering to adapt a feature film based on Jeff the Killer, the creepypasta character who first surfaced online back in 2008. The announcement landed today, and the pitch is unusual: Tongal's model invites creators to actively participate, with its website open for submissions of ideas about Jeff's motivation, vibe, and killing technique.
That's the hook. Not just a movie, but a movie built with the crowd that made the character famous.
Jeff the Killer started as an online creepypasta, one of those viral horror urban legends passed around forums and imageboards. The lore describes a 13-year-old boy who begins a killing spree after being disfigured by bullies. His scarred white face and "Go to sleep" catchphrase became a heavy inspiration for later creepypasta, fan works, and spinoffs like Slender Man and Jane the Killer. Nobody really owns the character in a conventional sense. He belongs to the internet.
Which makes adapting him tricky. Moss is leading the project's creative direction alongside a community-driven pitching process already underway, an approach designed to honor that grassroots history rather than flatten it into studio formula. She carries 11.4 million TikTok followers and will serve as a producer, working with Tongal to involve emerging filmmakers throughout development.
Moss knows the territory.
Forbes profiled her as a creator of surreal worlds, noting that she shoots in a style she calls "fever dreams," using jump cuts, strange props, and wild costumes. Her short film Funny Bunny, which she wrote, co-directed, and starred in, was selected for the HollyShorts Film Festival, the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, and two others. "I grew up reading Jeff the Killer and all of the creepypasta horror stories, so there's definitely a nostalgic connection for me," Moss told The Wrap.
Joining her as producers are veteran film executives Mark Korshak and Michael McKay, whose credits include Incoming, Peppermint, and The Age of Adaline. The film will be Tongal's first original feature-length horror project and the latest expansion of its growing slate.
Tongal is not a traditional studio. Founded in 2009 in Santa Monica, the company connects businesses needing creative work with an online community of writers, directors, and production companies. Its network spans 160,000 creators across 175 countries, and its first major film was Pharrell Williams' animated biopic Piece by Piece, enlisting 100 creators alongside Focus Features and director Morgan Neville. Earlier this year, Tongal secured the film rights to the cult video game Tecmo Bowl.
"I've been a huge fan of creepypasta for a long time and was exploring titles around 2017 with a network partner of ours, so it was on my radar," Tongal co-founder and CEO James DeJulio told The Wrap.
The timing is loud.
Kane Parsons' Backrooms, adapted from his own creepypasta-inspired web series, debuted on May 29 and rocketed to $81.4 million in its domestic opening weekend, the biggest A24 debut ever. By its fourth weekend, it had crossed $300 million worldwide. That film's production budget was just $10 million. It is yet another example of Hollywood rushing to adapt online creepypasta and viral horror shorts into movies.
But Backrooms had something most IP adaptations lack: a single identifiable creator in Parsons, who built the YouTube series and then directed the film himself. Jeff the Killer has no single author. "What I've always loved about Jeff is how much of the character was built by the internet," Moss said. Tongal's crowd-sourced model may be the only development pipeline that makes sense for a property like that.
Selected ideas from the open pitch will earn their creators $300 each. It is a modest sum for what could become a theatrical feature. Still, the principle is the point. Internet folklore resists single ownership, and Tongal is betting that the audience who built the legend will also buy the ticket.
Whether that bet lands remains an open question. The creepypasta-to-cinema pipeline is barely a pipeline at all. It's one smash hit and a lot of hope.
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