‘The Mandela Effect’ Set for Big Screen Treatment, David Guy Levy Tapped to Direct Psychological Sci-Fi Thriller — Exclusive
This isn’t fake news. Periscope Entertainment has announced today that David Guy Levy will direct their upcoming psychological sci-fi thriller “The Mandela Effect,” which is written by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen. The film “a man who becomes obsessed with facts and events that have been collectively misremembered by thousands of people. Believing the phenomena to be the symptom of something much larger, his obsession eventually leads him to question reality itself.”
The title refers to the strange phenomena of mass groups of people collectively “remembering” events or things that never happened. The theory pulls its name from the bizarre case of many people believing that Nelson Mandela died in prison — going so far as to “recall” clips from a televised funeral — though the civil rights leader actually died in 2013. Other examples of the so-called effect include misquoted movie lines (“Luke, I am your father” is a biggie, so is ““Life is like a box of chocolates,” both of which are incorrect), names of popular products and misremembered film and television titles.
READ MORE: Sinbad’s ’Shazaam’: Inside the Internet’s Conspiracy Theory About a Non-Existent Movie
As Buzzfeed explains it in a very popular primer on popular Mandela Effect examples, “These false memories have some people thinking their memory sucks, but some wonder if they’ve gone to a parallel universe, or if time travelers have gone to the past and slightly affected our present, or if they’re simply losing their freakin’ minds. Whichever it is, what’s most interesting about the Mandela effect is that so many individuals share the same false memories.”
Recently, the internet went crazy for a Mic story that dove deep into another long-standing “memory” held by scads of Americans who came of age in the eighties and nineties: That Sinbad starred in a genie movie entitled “Shazaam.” (He didn’t.)
The new film is based on a story created by Levy and Schlachtenhaufen and marks their second creative collaboration, following their horror feature “Would You Rather.” Levy and Schlachtenhaufen will produce under the Periscope Entertainment banner.
Of the new feature, Levy commented, “‘The Mandela Effect’ is a timely and relatable topic which we think audiences will really gravitate towards, and we are excited to make this into a heady sci-fi film that will ooze with indie spirit.”
Casting on the project is currently underway, and production is slated to begin in mid-June.
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