Horror Industry News — Monday, August 24, 2026

Focus Features' 'Obsession' crosses $500M worldwide, becoming the first original film of the 2020s to do it and the highest-grossing title ever made for under $1M; Curry Barker is already prepping 'Anything but Ghosts' with Focus.

$25 million domestic opening for Insidious: Out of the Further left Sony’s horror sequel behind Spider-Man’s $39 million fourth-week hold; the franchise remains one of Blumhouse and Atomic Monster’s steadiest theatrical engines.

World premiere slots Nervous as the opening film of Tubi FrightFest London on Aug. 27; the Korean-UK co-pro follows with stops at MOTELX and Fantasy Filmfest.

HOLLER is in production in Illinois and pushing a final Kickstarter to finish the apocalypse horror feature; the campaign is the bridge into post as the indie tries to close out its budget.

Disney+ and Hulu line up a September slate anchored by American Horror Story season 13, Berlin-set vampire drama City of Blood and Korean thriller Made in Korea; the month also adds library horror like Jennifer’s Body and Coraline.

Quiver Distribution sets Gaskins: The Hitchhiker Killer for digital and on-demand on Aug. 28; the true-crime horror-thriller stars Taylor Stiles and Shena Verrett, with Chris Helton directing from JL Goddard’s script.

True-crime feature clears a major streaming milestone in four days; Netflix has another performance marker for its unscripted-to-scripted crime lane.

Netflix locks Oct. 9 for Animals, Ben Affleck's kidnapping thriller with Steven Yeun, Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson; the late-fall slot points to a prestige rollout.

Pierce Brosnan’s remake of a Sylvester Stallone thriller is locked for release; another IP-driven genre-adjacent title gets a date rather than a new production or sales beat.

Sony has snapped up Will Simmons' short story Renegades for feature adaptation; Simmons is writing the script while Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley direct and Hutch Parker produces.

Paramount Primal is set to reboot A Nightmare on Elm Street, while a separate Warner Bros. reboot is reportedly in development; Robert Englund won’t return, and no replacement Freddy has entered formal talks.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Bring Her Back each won two APDG Awards; Phillip Rhodes received the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Aphrodite Kondos earned the Outstanding Contribution to Design Award.

Mark O’Brien and Anneke Sluiters star in Soma, a psychological sci-fi thriller from Belgian-Hungarian director Miklós Keleti, now underway as a Canadian co-production filming in Estonia and the Netherlands.

Prime Video will premiere The Seven’s Rock, Paper, Landmines in November across 240+ countries, adapt 1986 manga Please Save My Earth for a worldwide autumn 2027 release, and film Brazilian EXchange version Love Transit next month with Formata and Boninho.

Best Friend Forever boarded international sales on Eugene Kotlyarenko’s “Vintage Violence,” starring Cole Sprouse, Kiko Mizuhara, Nijiro Murakami, Pierre Taki and Hio Miyazawa, ahead of its Toronto Midnight Madness premiere; WME handles U.S. rights.

Yeon Sang-ho’s thriller Paradise Lost lands in TIFF Special Presentation and a TIFF Summit: Dialogues slot with Hirokazu Kore-eda; the child-disappearance mystery follows his Cannes Midnight bow with Colony and targets an October release.

Gaumont pre-sells A Good Little Soldier across nine territories, with Palace Films, Xenix, BTeam, Rosebud, I Wonder, Cinéart, Alambique, MCF and Mars Film closing ahead of Venice competition and TIFF Special Presentation bows.

Netflix’s Teach You a Lesson lands at No. 6 on the platform’s 2026 most-watched list with 48.2 million views, making it the only K-drama in the top 10; breakout numbers are already fueling season 2 chatter.

Domestic box office passes $7 billion through Aug. 23, up 20% year over year and only 7% behind 2019; the argument for protecting the theatrical window gets fresh ammo as fall titles like Resident Evil, Clayface and A24’s Onslaught enter the runway.

Paramount's survival thriller lands an out-of-competition San Sebastián slot, with Brad Pitt and David Ayer set to present; the fest add gives the title a prestige launch pad before rollout.

Spider-Man drives August to a record $1.1B domestic; the month is now on pace to double 2025, when Blumhouse's 'Weapons' led the frame with $132.5M.

HBO Max ordered eight half-hour episodes of The People v. Gorilla Grodd, a DC Studios/WBTV comedy from James Gunn, Peter Safran, Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault. Skyler Gisondo stars as Jimmy Olsen investigating Grodd’s murder conviction.

Jane Schoenbrun’s queer meta slasher Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gets a production-design breakdown centered on matte paintings, VHS-era iconography, and a Vancouver Island shoot base. The team says the film’s world was built as a tactile, in-camera horror fantasy rather than a gore-first exercise.

North American theatrical rollout kicks off Sept. 4 for Vietnam’s found-footage breakout, with Mockingbird Pictures booking AMC, Regal and Cinemark. Runup Vietnam and Hive Media Corp’s production topped the local box office, crossed 1 million admissions and hit VND78 billion ($3 million), marking Hive’s first production investment outside Korea.

$17 million Cannes buy lands at A24; Club Kid opens theatrically Nov. 6 after a bidding war that also drew Netflix, Searchlight Pictures, Focus Features and Mubi.

Martin boarded on the eve of the Mérida shoot as executive producer, playing Roby, an actor hired to portray Bernal’s Cuban lifeguard protagonist in a biopic commissioned by the character’s wife; Paris sales outfit The Pool Films handles the comedy-drama with surreal elements. Bernal co-wrote, produces and directs his third feature.