Slender Man is staying at Sony. Not only is it staying at the studio, the Sylvain White-directed film will be released earlier than expected.

The release date has been moved up to August 10 from August 24, 2018.

Last month, Variety reported that the film was quietly being shopped around Hollywood.

According to that report, Sony had envisioned the film as a low-budget, Blumhouse-style release in the vein of horror films such as Truth or Dare, Split, Happy Death Day and more famously, Get Out. The producers, on the other hand, wanted take what might be an even riskier approach and push the picture to be distributed across more movie screens, which would have resulted in a bigger marketing push and more money to spend on Sony’s end.

Variety also said the finished film had already been shown to various companies such as Amazon and Netflix, but some companies expressed skepticism regarding the finished product, particularly its commercial potential.

The film already had drawn backlash from the jump as its title character, a viral meme character that depicts a man with abnormally long arms and a featureless face, allegedly inspired the attempted murder of Payton Leutner who was stabbed 19 times by two 12-year-old girls and survived. Some are criticizing the film for capitalizing on Leutner’s attack, which was the subject for the HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman.

Slender Man was written by David Birke and will star Joey King, Jaz Sinclair and Julia Goldani Telles.