Horror Industry News — Wednesday, August 26, 2026

MPA hands Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil an R for strong bloody violence, gore and language; the reboot is leaning hard into survival-horror territory with Austin Abrams aboard.

Manifest Film has boarded Nataša Urban’s motherhood horror feature ‘Vagina Dentata’ as co-producer; the project is already 60% financed and heads into Haugesund seeking final co-financiers, sales and festival partners. The Norwegian-led package is pitching on the Nordic Co-Production Market slate with Romanian editor Dana Bunescu attached.

LevelK has boarded Norwegian psycho-thriller ‘Anathema,’ a low-budget $1.7 million co-production now being packaged across Norway, Denmark and Germany. The Haugesund market title is still hunting co-financiers and distributors, giving LevelK an early foothold in a fresh genre slate.

Insidious: Fuera del más allá opened second in Spain with €1.4 million from 313 cinemas, breaking the late-summer Spider-Man/Ulises duopoly. The weekend’s top 20 totaled more than €6.4 million, with Sony’s horror sequel outpacing the rest of the new releases.

BloodStream adds 48 daily titles plus 300-plus Severin vault films in September; the rollout leans hard into slashers, giallo, creature features and folk horror ahead of Severin's 20th anniversary.

Tubi’s Sony and NBCUniversal deals add hundreds of films and TV episodes across the UK, Australia and Canada, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Jurassic World, Baby Driver, Ex Machina, Lady Bird and Shaun of the Dead.

Fantasia-winning Kyrgyz psychological horror Burning lands an exclusive Sept. 4 streaming premiere on IndiePix Unlimited via Foundry Communications. Radik Ashimov’s grief-driven village mystery adds another genre title to the post-Fantasia pipeline.

Dave Boyle’s supernatural thriller Never After Dark exits festivals with SXSW Midnighter Audience Award and Overlook’s Grand Jury Prize for Feature Film; the laurels strengthen its sales profile.

Cannes Midnight premiere for Yeon Sang-ho’s action-horror Colony; Well-Go USA opens the South Korean outbreak thriller in theaters Aug. 28. Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been and Go Soo star, with Choi Gyu-seok co-writing.

Mike Hatton boards Nick Simon's What Happened to Doris? as Jerry, opposite Heather Graham and Mimi Rogers; the Doris Bither haunting adaptation is set to premiere at Fantastic Fest.

Horror still spikes fast on streaming, but the report says the genre keeps hitting a ceiling on long-tail reach after the launch bump fades.

Gaumont has locked international rights to Francois Ozon's Summer Of Fire and is already taking the film to buyers at Venice and TIFF: The Market. The French release is set for Feb. 10, 2027; the film leans on childhood dread and escalating suspense rather than overt horror.

Season 3 is already a few weeks into production; Apple TV+ kept Fifth Season on as EP after buying the series in February. Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson had been teasing the start, but no release date is set.

Jason Voorhees gets a Halloween marketing push via limited-edition PBR packaging, retail displays, and watch parties timed to build buzz for Crystal Lake.

A24’s Backrooms hits HBO Max after a theatrical run that made it the studio’s top domestic and global earner; the streaming move keeps the Kane Parsons breakout in rotation.

Smile lands an exclusive free-streaming window on Pluto TV Sept. 1, giving Parker Finn’s 2022 breakout its first no-cost AVOD premiere.

Warner Bros.’ dinosaur creature feature is headed for a roughly $20M opening against an estimated $80M budget; the analysis frames it as a rare original horror tentpole that’s being undercut by soft marketing.

Netflix has lined up Lee Jung-eun and Kim Moo-yul for The Shooter, an action-noir series from Lee Kwon and Studio Dragon; the streamer is building out its Korean slate with a table-read reveal and a cast that also includes Huh Joon-ho.

Paramount+ is retooling Star Trek after the Skydance merger, with no new live-action series announced beyond the current slate; Jane Wiseman says the streamer is talking to writers, leaning on CBS Studios, and eyeing a new movie via Paramount Pictures.

Adèle Exarchopoulos boards Park Chan-wook’s $60M ultraviolent Western for Warner Bros. and Clockwork; production is slated for February with Austin Butler, Matthew McConaughey, Pedro Pascal, and Tang Wei already attached.

MGM+ acquired North American, Latin American and Italian rights to the five-part spy thriller Secret Service, starring Gemma Arterton, Rafe Spall and Alex Kingston; the ITV drama opened in the UK to nearly 4M viewers in April.

Mavryk acquired worldwide rights to Polaris Banks’ experimental thriller And Her Body Was Never Found ahead of the TIFF market. Banks’ feature directorial debut premiered at SXSW and co-stars Banks and co-writer Mor Cohen as a married couple in crisis.

Breda's BUT festival leans into a 'Simply the Pest' theme, screening Ticks, Slither, The Fly, Night of the Creeps and other cult infestations from Aug. 26-30.

Lionsgate’s R-rated horror-thriller Turning Point is out today on VOD and digital platforms. Written and directed by Joshua Wagner (Mimesis), it follows burglars trapped in a house owned by a mutating flesh-eater.

Final talks put Charles Melton in Kakashi’s mask for Lionsgate’s live-action Naruto, with Destin Daniel Cretton directing the manga adaptation.

Image imprint Ninth Circle is publishing Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s horror one-shot The Snail this November, keeping the publisher’s genre line moving with a new creator pairing.

MGM+ confirms a second season for The Institute and rolls out first-look images; the Stephen King adaptation keeps the streamer active in prestige horror-series development.

Danielle Harris and Scout Taylor-Compton co-direct and share story credit on Last Chance Motel through their own banner; The Horror Collective sets a Digital bow for Oct. 6 after a Panic Fest run.

Brainstorm Media sets Tommy Savas’ AI-horror feature C.O.G. for a Sept. 4 theatrical launch and a Sept. 25 on-demand rollout; the chatbot goes malevolent.