ScreamWire Daily

$100M domestic in six days; Backrooms overtakes Marty Supreme as A24’s top North American earner and is closing in on the studio’s global record, with weekday holds staying unusually strong.

Backrooms has crossed $100M domestic in six days, making it A24’s highest-grossing stateside release; Parsons is developing a sequel and a new original with Osgood Perkins, with A24 or Neon expected to be in the mix.

Neon says Backrooms and Obsession prove Gen Z and Gen Alpha will still show up theatrically; Tom Quinn also says the company has picked up Asif Kapadia’s 70 Up and remains in stake-sale talks with Department M.

UTA adds Emma Roberts as Belletrist keeps its scripted slate moving across Hulu, Netflix, Peacock and Amazon MGM. Roberts is also set to return for American Horror Story season 13.

Binding bids for Casey Wasserman’s The Team are due June 8 as UTA, Permira, and Goldman Sachs-backed Excel Sports Management circle the $4 billion media empire; the piece also maps how Obsession and Backrooms point to longer-term stability in microbudget horror theatrical playability.

Peacock and A24’s Crystal Lake is targeting an October 15 launch with Linda Cardellini as Pamela Vorhees; Brad Caleb Kane is framing the Friday the 13th prequel as a paranoid ’70s psychological thriller with rivers of blood. Callum Vinson plays Jason Voorhees, with William Catlett, Devin Kessler, Cameron Scoggins and others rounding out the cast.

$50M-plus opening chatter for Paramount/Miramax’s 'Scary Movie' revival as A24/Chernin’s 'Backrooms' posts an $81M launch and the biggest R-rated horror Monday on record; Amazon MGM’s 'Masters of the Universe' is tracking $35M-$40M on a reported $170M budget.

Paramount’s leak of ‘Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender’ has turned into a content-security crisis, with Vision Media probing whether a third-party screening platform left awards-screeners exposed. The breach echoes earlier studio hacks and reinforces how expensive the weak link in digital distribution can be.

Fragrant Nature Film Creations lands Indian subcontinent rights to Sundance U.S. Dramatic winner ‘Josephine’ after Sumerian paid a seven-figure U.S. sum. The Kochi-based buyer is making its first Hollywood acquisition and plans a theatrical rollout across seven territories after the U.S. window closes.

$750K Curry Barker breakout Obsession has cleared $80M worldwide, turning a tiny psychological horror thriller into 2026’s surprise profitability story on sold-out screenings and spoiler-fueled online chatter.

Universal yanks Obsession from PVOD to protect a 45-day-plus theatrical window after the $750K horror hit surged past $150M worldwide; A24’s Backrooms is cited as further proof original genre titles can still leg out in theaters.

WME inks Gore Verbinski for representation in all areas as Blind Wink Productions stays active on his side. The filmmaker behind The Ring and A Cure for Wellness most recently directed sci-fi indie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

Lee Cronin says he may not return to direct another Evil Dead film, but he is executive producing Evil Dead Burn and Evil Dead Wrath; Rise remains the franchise record-holder after a $147M run.

A24’s Death of a Unicorn cracked HBO Max’s top ten on June 1, 2026 after a $16 million worldwide run on an estimated $15 million budget. The dark fairytale’s streaming rebound gives Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd a clean second-life data point.

Joe Bob Briggs is lining up a new Shudder-hosted series after The Last Drive-In; details were teased at Satan’s Workshop, but rollout terms stayed under wraps. The move keeps one of Shudder’s marquee horror personalities in-house.

Hollywood is actively mining YouTube horror creators for the next breakout feature packages as Obsession and Backrooms post major box-office runs. Dylan Clark’s Portrait of God is set up at Universal with Jordan Peele and Sam Raimi producing and a Blair Witch reboot at Lionsgate, while Neon has tapped Sam Evenson to direct Mora with Roy Lee and Steven Schneider producing.

Universal locks Jamie Lee Curtis as Jessica Fletcher in a Murder, She Wrote feature with a Dec. 22, 2027 theatrical date; Jason Moore directs from Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo’s script. Amy Pascal, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are producing.

Backrooms mania is spawning direct-to-fan monetization, with A24 charging $60 for self-adhesive yellow-wallpaper panels and rolling out additional shop tie-ins off the hit’s breakout run. The merchandising push comes as the film posts an $81.4M North American opening on a $10M budget, signaling a bigger post-theatrical revenue play for indie genre hits.

3.36M Indonesian admissions and sales into 148 countries make Ghost in the Cell Barunson E&A’s biggest global push yet; Joko Anwar’s prison-set genre pic has already topped the local box office for three straight weeks and is rolling out across Asia and the West.

Netflix is developing a sequel to War Machine after the sci-fi action title became one of the streamer’s biggest viewed films; Patrick Hughes returns to write and direct. Alan Ritchson’s return is still unresolved, but the sequel pushes the title toward franchise status.

Focus's 'Obsession' tacks on $5.7M Tuesday for a $117M domestic total; the four-week run keeps posting week-over-week gains and is tracking as a rare leggy theatrical hit.

BIFAN’s 11-film international competition leans hard into horror and adjacent lanes, with Obsession, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and multiple world premieres headlining the milestone Bucheon lineup. The retooled top competition underscores the festival’s role as a key Asian discovery lane for genre buyers.

Zaid Abu Hamdan’s crime thriller ‘Boomah’ is set for its world launch at Shanghai, with Front Row holding global rights and targeting a Q4 MENA rollout. The Jordanian production is backed by the Red Sea Fund and the Royal Film Commission, keeping Arab genre titles on the international sales radar.

$250 million makes Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey the priciest R-rated film on record, with Universal locking July 17, 2026 for the Homer epic’s theatrical launch; the runtime lands at 2 hours and 52 minutes and the cast spans Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Mia Goth.

Thomas Edward Hindy's Mimic is being built out as a feature after the short's festival wins; the body-double horror concept is being positioned as original monster IP with franchise upside.

Lionsgate has Caine in production, with Mason Thames joining Donnie Yen, Rina Sawayama and Dacre Montgomery on the John Wick spinoff’s call sheet. Mattson Tomlin and Michael McGrale wrote the screenplay; Keanu Reeves, Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Chad Stahelski are producing.

Sébastien Vaniček is teasing a new breed of Deadites for Evil Dead Burn, with the franchise pivoting hard into domestic-horror dread and creature design. New Line’s July 10 release stars Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan and Tandi Wright.

Brendan Haley’s LGBTQ+ survival horror SCORCH MARKS wraps production and surfaces first-look images for Pride Month. The completion note puts the title on the clock for distribution or festival positioning.

$175M budget puts 'Supergirl' on a $430M+ break-even path; Warner Bros. is stress-testing DC Studios' theatrical reset after slow presales, multiple test screenings, and three ending changes.

Filmoption opens Avalon Fast’s CAMP in Canadian theaters on June 19, with Dark Sky Films set for a U.S. theatrical release on June 26; the Canadian-made horror title played Fantastic Fest, Brooklyn Horror, Sitges, SXSW Sydney, and TIFF Next Wave.