There are some who have accused director Tim Burton of not having an original idea since The Nightmare Before Christmas, and this news will…well, probably not disabuse them of that notion: Burton is currently crowdsourcing a new story based on the Stainboy character he first introduced in his 1997 poetry book, The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy, using passages submitted at a maximum of 127 characters at a time by fans on Twitter. (Since all tweets require the “#burtonstory” hashtag, 127 characters is all you get.)
Late last week, Burton contributed the opening sentence—“Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor”—and since then, thousands of follow-up submissions have been received, but so far only a select 15 have been deemed worthy of inclusion on the project’s official website, which will publish the full story on Dec. 6. No doubt a team of increasingly listless interns has spent the past few days dutifully scrolling past hundreds of, “Suddenly, Johnny Depp walked in” jokes. Or at least, they will now. [via Movieline]