ScreamWire Daily

Curry Barker will write, direct and produce his third feature, an original idea set up with Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Universal Film Group alongside Roy Lee and Steven Schneider’s Spooky Pictures and Divide/Conquer; Barker’s second film Anything but Ghosts is currently in post for Blumhouse/Focus.

Peacock gives Dungeon Crawler Carl a straight-to-series order, adapting Matt Dinniman’s sci-fi LitRPG books with Chris Yost writing and Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door producing. The streamer is betting on a monster-filled apocalypse series after keeping the project in development and following up another pickup this month.

Netflix lands a multi-year overall TV pact with Proximity Media after the company’s Disney agreement expired; the deal keeps Ryan Coogler’s television arm aligned with Netflix as its next slate moves into development.

Domestic box office is back above $4.2B year-to-date, but execs at Deadline x Regal’s Future of Storytelling panel are taking a wait-and-see stance on the Paramount-WBD merger as consolidation looms. Panelists said Gen Z and Gen Alpha are returning through campaign pivots, meme marketing and premium-format screens.

Amazon/MGM's RoboCop series is set for a January 2027 Vancouver shoot; James Wan boards as EP and key-episode director, Peter Ocko is tapped to showrun, and the reboot introduces cyborg lead Marc Kyle.

Disney Kids & Family boards Warrior Cats as an animated series for Disney+ and Disney Channel; the adaptation is already in production and targeted for 2028.

Werwulf is already in production in the UK and headed for a December 25, 2026 release; Focus Features says Robert Eggers' werewolf film aims for scares and an intimate portrait of the curse, with Ralph Ineson, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp and Willem Dafoe aboard.

Chernin Entertainment boards Palm Grove, an original erotic thriller with Ana de Armas, Kate Hudson and Kornél Mundruczó attached. James Morosini wrote the script and the package is out to buyers.

Curry Barker’s Obsession has grossed $290 million worldwide off a £750,000 budget, a huge theatrical return that strengthens the case for microbudget horror.

Pearl River Film, Black Body Interactive and Meng Guo Ji Media have launched a Guo Ni studio built around eight YA and sci-fi franchise adaptations, with Baidu AI Cloud in as production-tech partner. Dreamship leads the slate; Angel Street No. 23 is already in preliminary live-action series talks.

Vietnam’s Cinema Department is tightening content rules as horror saturates the local box office; imported genre titles may need cuts or face distribution barriers, while Ma Xó leads with nearly 135 billion VND.

Universal and Amblin tap Scott Beck and Bryan Woods to direct a top-secret sci-fi feature with Steven Spielberg producing. The A Quiet Place duo land another high-concept studio assignment.

Molly Windsor has signed with Anonymous Content off the back of Unchosen, the Netflix psychological-thriller limited series that opened at No. 1 globally and logged 10.4 million first-week views.

BBC renews Nightsleeper for season 2 and shifts production from Euston Films to Element Pictures, with filming set for Belfast later this year. The new run moves the thriller from rail to the Irish Sea and arrives as the BBC cuts development spend by 15%.

Prime Video adds Emily Mortimer, Manny Jacinto and Thomasin McKenzie to Fallout Season 3 as production kicks off in Los Angeles this month.

Black Bear sets an Oct. 23 limited theatrical release and Oct. 30 expansion for Sundance pickup Wicker. The Tango and Topic Studios-financed adaptation will also be sold internationally by Black Bear, with UK and Canada handled through Elevation Pictures.

Ari Aster has three features queued up and plans to shoot his next film in November. The update keeps one of horror’s most closely watched filmmakers on a firm production timetable.

Glenn Danzig will direct Hellmask, adapting his Verotik comic set in a brutal medieval world of dark magic, armored warriors and bloody battle scenes; James Cullen Bressack is producing, with casting underway and a planned August start.

Netflix has canceled The Boroughs despite the Duffer-produced sci-fi horror series landing in the top 10; Geena Davis says the cast got the news before the public announcement and the season was built to stand alone. Davis’s character arc centered on a retirement-community revolt against a creature feeding on residents’ brain fluid.

Netflix’s canceled The Boroughs premiered May 21 and logged 1.2 billion U.S. viewing minutes for May 18-24, debuting No. 2 overall behind Nemesis at 1.31 billion; the six-hour, 15-minute series translated to about 3.2 million views.

Dentsu is rolling Fandom Intelligence out of Japan and into the U.S., U.K., India and Greater China, pitching brand partners on a dataset that says top IP converts fans into buyers 30% above the entertainment average. The platform now tracks 400+ IPs and 100-plus brand collaborations a year from its Tokyo hub.

O.T. Fagbenle boards Bertie Ellwood’s mystery thriller Eleven Missing Days as Agatha Christie’s publisher Allen Lane; filming is already underway in the UK with Vincent Cassel and Felicity Jones set. The film pivots on Christie’s real-life disappearance, positioning it as a true-crime-leaning thriller.

Germany’s FSK has blocked Uwe Boll’s Armie Hammer-led Citizen Vigilante after refusing the film a rating over alleged anti-migrant violence. Quiver still rolls the action thriller out in the U.S. on Friday as Boll fights the ruling.

Mortgaged-family-home financing got Mexico's first stop-motion feature, 'I Am Frankelda,' over the line; Netflix backs the animated film from brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz. The project turns a brutally personal fundraising saga into a streamer-backed feature.

NEON opens Adrian Chiarella’s queer supernatural horror feature Leviticus in theaters June 19 after a Sundance Midnight premiere; Mia Wasikowska boards as executive producer alongside a cast led by Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen.

Season 2 has started filming in Toronto; Netflix adds Saweetie to the cast as the manga-based thriller returns with Simon Barry back in the driver’s seat after season 1 topped 10 million views.

Gaumont cleared the rights problem on Cédric Anger’s Apple TV miniseries The Hunt by cutting a deal with the rights holders after the project was flagged as too close to Douglas Fairbairn’s Shoot; the series was held back a month before its December 2025 launch and now streams on Apple TV.

Terror Films Releasing and Small Town Monsters are rolling 20 folklore docs onto digital platforms in a July-long Bigfoot slate; the first five titles are going wide on Vudu, Amazon and Tubi for the first time.

Neon sets Alex Ullom’s feature debut It Ends for theaters Aug. 21, keeping the Gen Z road horror on the big screen this summer.

Sony’s Klara and the Sun rolls out first-look art ahead of its Oct. 23 theatrical release; Taika Waititi says the Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation began principal photography in New Zealand in early 2024 and was pushed into a deliberately stripped-back dystopian sci-fi mode.