Horror Industry News — Thursday, May 28, 2026

A24 and HBO are developing Angel Heart as a series with Zac Efron starring and executive producing; Zach Baylin writes and Jonathan van Tulleken directs. The project retools William Hjortsberg’s cult horror property for TV with a supernatural missing-person hook.

$50M+ opening puts A24’s Backrooms on track to reset the studio’s box-office ceiling; Kane Parsons’ YouTube-born horror breakout is powering a creator-IP surge at theatrical. The film now leads a packed weekend as indie genre titles keep proving out on the big screen.

Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery's proposed $110B merger is facing an organized film-worker and small-business pushback campaign; a June tour will hit Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta with FCC Democrat Anna M. Gomez, WGA West president Michele Mulrooney and former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya.

Low-budget horror Obsession reclaimed the daily box office lead from Disney's The Mandalorian and Grogu, hitting $95.8M worldwide on a reported sub-$1M budget. The film's second-weekend hold is tracking like a breakout, not a front-loaded genre opener.

First fully AI-generated feature accepted by a major festival; Fountain 0’s 75-minute Dreams of Violets bows at Tribeca on June 10 for about $2,000, with Ash Koosha using Kling AI, Claude and Gemini to build the film. Jane Rosenthal is selling it as a test case for AI-era filmmaking and festival curation.

Netflix Animation feature workers ratify their first Animation Guild contract with 89% backing, locking in wage minimums, dismissal pay and workplace protections after the 2023 organizing drive.

North Road Television Studios has picked up the pilot spec for Sunken Meadow, an elevated horror series built around a family-drama hook; the project is being positioned as a secretive genre play with premium-TV ambitions.

Netflix released 23 original films globally in Q1 2026, its lowest first-quarter movie total since 2018, even as Australian prices climbed and 2025 ad revenue topped US$1.5 billion; the streamer is shifting to a leaner, higher-conviction movie slate.

Australia Q1 IMAX box office hit A$7.6M, up 130% year over year, as a new Hoyts pact adds 10 locations across Australia and New Zealand and lifts the regional backlog to 14 systems. IMAX also reaffirmed US$1.4B global box-office guidance while fresh sale chatter swirls around the company.

Fantasia and TIFF are teaming on a Frontières genre showcase, adding a new market-facing lane for horror and adjacent projects headed into fall sales season.

A&E orders a two-part, four-hour true-crime doc on Scott Peterson with Left/Right; the cable net is revisiting the Laci Peterson murder case for linear audiences.

Lionsgate adds its library to Movies Anywhere next month, opening roughly 225 films in phase one and rolling out about 100 more titles monthly through 2026 and early 2027; the move widens the studio’s transactional reach across Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play/YouTube, and other retailers.

Tribeca adds Dreams of Violets, a $2,000 AI-generated feature from Fountain 0 that’s being billed as the first full-length live-action AI film accepted by a major festival. Ash Koosha and Pooya Koosha built it with Google’s Nano Banana, Kling AI and Claude, turning the AI pipeline into the selling point.

Creative BC taps Laura Lightbown as interim CEO, keeping leadership in-house at the provincial screen agency as it steers production support and financing.

Shirley Jackson Award nominees span horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction; winners will be announced at Readercon 35 in Burlington, Massachusetts on July 11, 2026.

Our Films and Alice Rohrwacher are developing a feature take on Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees; the Mubi-backed financing and distribution model keeps the project in a cross-territory European coproduction lane.

iQIYI greenlights Rent A Plus-One as a vertical microdrama, another sign Chinese streamers are leaning harder into mobile-first shortform series.

HBO Films’ secret Sundance buy Miss You, Love You crashes into the outstanding movie race as streamers crowd the category; Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu are all positioning competing titles for the Emmy window.

Netflix says it now has 100 original series and movie productions in Italy after Ted Sarandos met with PM Giorgia Meloni in Rome. The message is clear: the streamer is deepening its local production footprint across Europe.

Paul Schrader used an AI on the Lot keynote to test ChatGPT with a script prompt and got back a concept called The Collection Agent. The remarks slot into Hollywood’s growing debate over AI’s role in development and screenwriting.

Adam Wingard is out and Paramount is back in pitch mode on Face/Off 2, leaving the long-gestating sequel without a clear creative path. Nicolas Cage says he has no read on the project’s next move, a sign the package has slipped back into development limbo.

Deconstructing Dahlia stays in development as the Short family pushes LAPD to release Elizabeth Short’s autopsy report, a key archive document withheld for 79 years. The true-crime docuseries is being framed around the Black Dahlia case itself.

Bloody Bites and Cineverse acquire The Blue Diamond and set a June 5 debut; the award-winning short stars Barbara Crampton and extends the Bloody Disgusting partnership.