UPDATE: This news was premature and unfounded, apparently.
According to the unlikeliest of sources — Us Weekly, America’s purveyor of Baby Joy — Ryan Murphy has already set the subject for his sixth season of American Horror Story. Having tackled haunted houses, alien invasions, dead heroin addicts, undead Kathy Bates, carnies, possessed nuns, Nazi doctors, serial killers, nymphomaniacs, fashionable covens, voodoo queens, women who kill men just by having sex with them, women with three breasts, sexy vampires, and basement abortions, Murphy has allegedly set his sights on another frontier: Weird internet shit.
Us reports that the AHS writers are already “plotting” their next season, which will debut in the fall and allegedly focus on Slender Man. For those unfamiliar, Slender Man is a cult character/horror meme created on the Something Awful forums back in 2009, a black-suited, frighteningly skinny dude who abducts or otherwise traumatizes children. He’s since popped up in various forms on TV shows, in movies, and, most famously, in dozens of Creepy Pasta stories, stories that allegedly inspired two young girls to stab their best friend in Wisconsin back in 2014.
Sounds like perfect AHS fodder to me: Twisted, disturbing, with the potential to veer sharply and irreparably into the realm of bad taste. The only problem is that Murphy didn’t come up with Slender Man, nor did he come up with the Slender Man-centric script he wants to use. “Someone else wrote the script, and AHS wants to adapt it to fit the show,” says Us‘ “insider.” “They have to buy the rights. Then they’re going to figure out the cast from there.”
By “figure out,” Us Weekly must mean “agree to give more money to Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Matt Bomer, et al.” And Lady Gaga, too, if Murphy has his way: “They’re trying really hard to get her back!” adds the source. (Let’s be real: If Murphy actually has his way, the entire season will just be a long, violent sex scene between Lady Gaga and Slender Man that concludes with Gaga licking blood from her fingertips, then diving gracefully off a cliff and landing inside a speeding car driven by the grinning ghost of Alexander McQueen.) For her part, Gaga has yet to comment publicly on whether she’ll return to the show that won her a Golden Globe and a starring role in the best meme of all time.
