A petition to prevent the release of Sony's "Slender Man" movie has gained 4,000 signatures.
The petition asks the movie makers to be sensitive to the families of the 2014 incident in Waukesha, where two children stabbed their classmate to please the fictional boogeyman Slender Man.
The Care2 petition's author, Alison Perris, says, "It's every parent's nightmare: a child, violently attacked in the woods. Now imagine it had actually happened to your child...and a movie company was trying to profit off her story.”
Two of 12-year-old Payton Leutner's classmates lured her into the woods in 2014. One girl repeatedly stabbed Leutner 19 times as the other cheered her on.
The two were convinced that a fictional character named "Slender Man" would kill their families if they did not.
The father of one of the attackers, Bill Weir,isopposed to the movie’s release.
"It's absurd they want to make a movie like this. It's popularizing a tragedy is what it's doing. I'm not surprised but in my opinion, it's extremely distasteful. All we're doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through," Weier said.
The movie is in post-production currently, and is set to be released later in 2018.
