Spontaneous and No One Will Save You director Brian Duffield has the survival thriller Whalefall coming out in October, JT Mollner is directing his creature feature script Skeletons, and it’s rumored that he might be writing a new Alien movie script for 20th Century Studios (which may or may not mean that Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus sequel idea has been scrapped). While we wait to hear clarification on what’s going on in the Alien world, Deadline reports that Duffield has lined up another project: he’ll be directing a horror film called Siren Head for Warner Bros., working from a script he’s writing with Barbarian and Weapons writer/director Zach Cregger.
Siren Head is based on a viral horror meme created by Trevor Henderson and landed at Warner Bros. after a five-way bidding war.
Deadline provides some information: Unveiled in August 2018 by Henderson, a Canadian horror artist and illustrator, the Siren Head IP revolves around hand-drawn monsters digitally composited into real photographs. The character is a roughly 40-foot-tall, gaunt, emaciated humanoid figure — a predator hunting in rural towns and wooded areas across North America, which blends into environments and emits creepily distorted audio broadcasts to confuse and lure in prey.
Siren Head‘s rise to mainstream visibility was accelerated by Markiplier, the content creator behind Iron Lung, who began covering the property on his YouTube channel in 2020. From there, it’s become a fixture of horror content across social media, with fan-generated content racking up many millions of views.
It’s always interesting to find out about things that are super-popular online and have millions of fans, but I have managed to remain completely ignorant of their existence. I didn’t know “Siren Head” was a thing until Deadline explained it to me.
Cregger and Duffield will be producing the film with Roy Lee, Andrew Childs, and Scott Glassgold, while rights holder Henderson serves as an executive producer.
Are you interested in seeing what Brian Duffield and Zach Cregger are going to do with the Siren Head concept? Let us know by leaving a comment below.