Horror Industry News — Saturday, May 30, 2026

Damien Leone has locked a Lionsgate deal to write, direct and produce Tortures of the Damned, with Sam Raimi and Ghost House aboard; the original horror follows Terrifier 4 in pre-production and is set up with a bigger budget than Leone’s franchise roots.

A24’s Backrooms opens with $10M in Thursday-night previews; Obsession crosses $100M, underscoring horror’s box-office leverage.

A24’s Backrooms is tracking to a $76M-$79M opening, a record-setting launch for the indie banner and a breakout driven by under-35 turnout and repeat business. The huge run comes as co-financier Chernin Entertainment and A24 look poised to make Kane Parsons’ internet-born horror IP one of the year’s defining theatrical events.

Sarah Snook fronts a buyers-facing Birds limited series package, with Tom Spezialy writing and David Heyman’s Heyday Television teaming with Universal International Studios on a present-day Alaska reimagining built around bird attacks and a murder mystery.

Focus’s $15 million TIFF pickup of Obsession has paid off with a $95.8 million global cume and Tea Shop’s best result yet; James Harris and Mark Lane are using the hit to validate their first-time-director, off-system financing model.

$200M above-the-line Hawaii mob pic is close to a Disney/20th Century greenlight after a major Nick Bilton rewrite lands next month. Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt remain attached on a project set to fast-track if approved.

$10.4M Thursday previews put Backrooms on a $90M+ weekend path against a $10M budget, setting up A24’s biggest opening ever if the track holds. Weak audience scores, though, flag a potential second-weekend drop after the breakout debut.

$100M global on a sub-$1M budget has turned Obsession into the year’s loudest horror ROI story; Focus paid $15M for TIFF rights and the film’s 39.4% second-weekend jump is fueling the mid-budget theatrical argument.

Jim Mickle to direct and co-write with E.L. Katz; both developing an Image Comics adaptation. Mickle (Stake Land); Katz (Channel Zero).

Backrooms banked $10.4M on Thursday as A24’s horror breakout continues to outrun recent genre comps. Obsession is stretching past Longlegs, while Michael crosses $800M and resets the box office leaderboard.

The Match Factory has closed fresh territory sales on Cannes prize-winners Fatherland, Coward, The Dreamed Adventure and Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma. Mubi and Janus are already anchoring key releases across North America and multiple overseas markets.

Kyle Gallner boards Sony's Skeletons opposite Brie Larson; J.J. Abrams and JT Mollner are packaging the horror feature around a growing cast.

Frontières at TIFF Market will showcase five genre titles seeking buyers or sales agents, with Canadian projects taking most of the slate. Toronto gets a dedicated sales lane for indie horror and adjacent genre packages.

Curry Barker's Obsession has turned a $750K microbudget into a breakout horror hit, banking $17.2M on opening weekend and $23.9M in week two. The film's run is now driving a slower home-video window rather than an immediate Netflix pivot.

Magnolia Home Entertainment sets HEEL for Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand on May 26 after a festival run that included TIFF, BFI London and Rome. Jan Komasa’s psychological thriller leans into disturbed-family horror, with Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough toplining.

Fred Hechinger boards Jason Bateman’s original corpse-and-cover-up feature The Cackling of the Dodos, joining Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Michael McKean and Esther McGregor. Bateman directs for Aggregate, Untitled and Children at Play, giving the project a stacked ensemble early.

Robert Englund boards Rhys Frake-Waterfield's Pinocchio: Unstrung as a sinister Cricket; UK cinemas are set for July 24, with a Raindance premiere and Richard Brake leading the cast.

1-2 Special has taken North American rights to Sandra Wollner’s Cannes Un Certain Regard winner Everytime; Charades is handling international sales. The festival title follows a grieving family on a holiday trip where reality starts to blur.

Altitude sets Pinocchio: Unstrung for UK cinemas in July ahead of its festival debut; the public-domain Pinocchio riff turns the puppet into a horror property.

Microbudget YouTube-born horrors Backrooms and Obsession are outmuscling mainstream competition at the box office, pointing to real audience demand for creator-led genre titles. The performance strengthens the market case for viral IP and low-cost horror.

Sony is still targeting 28 Years Later III for a shoot next year, with Alex Garland back on script and Danny Boyle eyeing a return after the trilogy’s first two chapters were staged back-to-back.

Bill Moseley and Lynn Lowry board Al M. Hemphill’s Kayla's Going-Away Party, with Moseley also executive producing. Production is set for next spring in Sandwich, IL; Cú Chulainn Cinéma is eyeing distribution and festival partners ahead of a late-2027 release.

Curry Barker has wrapped Anything But Ghosts after Obsession; the next feature leans into a fake-hunter, real-haunting premise with horror-comedy energy.

Disney+ conditioning is undercutting theatrical urgency for The Mandalorian and Grogu, with the franchise’s streaming dominance making premium tickets feel optional. The piece frames the movie as a funnel play for Disney rather than a pure box-office event, while citing Parrot Analytics demand data and the platform’s subscriber-retention logic.

Haunted-DVD horror comedy Dead Media opens theatrically July 16, then moves to TVOD July 28. The rollout leans on an analog-media hook and a short theatrical-to-digital window.

IDW Dark is launching Fatal Fest, a five-issue horror miniseries from Hannah Rose May and Andrea Scalmazzi; the Hollywood-set satire turns the industry’s IP obsession into a kill-or-be-killed genre play.