Ryan Reynolds is producing a horror story that started as a series on Reddit (2024)

In the age of the internet, you don't necessarily need a best-selling book series to land a film deal.

Sometimes a collection of viral Reddit posts will do the job.

On Wednesday, Variety broke the news that Ryan Reynolds will be producing The Patient Who Nearly Drove Me Out of Medicine -- a horror story based on a series originally published by writer Jasper DeWitt on Reddit's r/nosleep sub.

Reynolds has since retweeted the story, and DeWitt has also posted about it.

Tweet may have been deleted

DeWitt originally posted his story as a nine-part series, the first instalment of which was published on r/nosleep in December 2016. The posts have been upvoted thousands of times, and received hundreds of comments.

For anyone unfamiliar with NoSleep, the community describes itself as "a place for realistic horror stories". Posters share fiction, mostly written in first person, which other users then comment on as if the stories shared really took place.

"Everything is true here, even if it's not," reads a line in the community details.

DeWitt's story is still available to read on the sub:

NoSleep currently has close to 13 million subscribers, and this wouldn't be the first time fiction posted there has gone on to be published or adapted.

One of the most famous examples of this is Penpal, a novel by Dathan Auerbach that also began as a serialisation. After the story went viral on Reddit, Auerbach raised close to $16,000 via Kickstarter in order to turn the story into a book.

Judging by the fact Auerbach's second novel has recently been published by Doubleday, DeWitt could well have bright things in his future.

Mashable has reached out to DeWitt, and Reynolds' representatives, for comment.

UPDATE: Dec. 6, 2018, 3:23 p.m. GMT Author Jasper DeWitt told us how he first heard about the interest from Ryan Reynolds.

"My manager texted me," he said. "I know that sounds mundane, but it really was that simple. I may have scared some people with the loud noise of happiness and triumph I made, reading that."

DeWitt's manager initially reached out to him through Reddit DMs, not long after he began posting his series on r/nosleep. DeWitt decided to hear him out.

"I thought he was a scammer," DeWitt said. "He wasn't. Lucky me."