The market of feature films based on viral Twitter threads is about to get bigger with the subgenre expanding from one movie (last year’s indie hit Zola) to two after the upcoming Dear David movie is released. In a new report The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Justin Long has been tapped to star in the film alongside Augustus Prew (The Morning Show, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings) and Andrea Bang (Kim’s Convenience, A Million Little Things). Mike Van Waes wrote the screenpaly for the film while John McPhail (Anna and the Apocalypse) will step behind the camera as director. Still totally lost about what this movie even is? Let’s break it down below.
Dear David started as a viral ghost story on Twitter back in 2017, tweeted to the world by former BuzzFeed employee Adam Ellis. The tale was expanded on over the course of a few weeks by Ellis who started it all by noting that his apartment was haunted “by the ghost of a dead child” who was “trying to kill” him. As horror stories go it started innocuous enough with weird behavior by his cats and unexplained phenomena in the hallway of his building, but feelings of dread and bad dreams prompted Ellis to document all of it including setting up cameras in his bedroom and apartment. In one of his dreams, Ellis said he was “in a library and a girl came up to me and said, ‘You’ve seen Dear David, haven’t you?’,” and in another Dear David sat by his bed.
He had a huge misshapen head that was dented on one side. I did my best to draw it: pic.twitter.com/AJizlw7qXe
— Adam ElIis (@adamtotscomix) August 7, 2017
As the saga evolved, photos of “David” appeared in Ellis’ feed, resulting in plenty of scrutiny from skeptics and sending believers to turn on all the lights in their hoomes. Considering his place of employment there was some doubt by many as to the validity of Ellis’ tale, but in a 2018 interview with TheWrap he stood by his viral thread and maintained it was all real.
“I’ve never been interested in convincing anyone that ghosts are real – I just wanted to tell my story,” Ellis said. “If it was all fiction, I probably would’ve updated more than once every couple weeks!”
The Dear David feature film is a co-production between BuzzFeed Studios and Lionsgate. In the film Augustus Prew will be playing Ellis while Justin Long is reportedly “playing the head of BuzzFeed.” Bang’s part is reportedly another supporting role, but one that was undisclosed.
If you’re interested in getting some goosebumps, here’s one of the spookier tweets from Ellis’ thread. No release date for Dear David has been confirmed, but production has reportedly wrapped.
— Adam ElIis (@adamtotscomix) December 13, 2017