Jeff Farley, Michael J. Epstein & Salvador Medina

Jana Winograde, Susan Rovner and Lloyd Braun launch aTwist as a vertical microdrama platform with 10 originals, including two horror series, and distribution hooks to Hartbeat, BET and National CineMedia. The service is live in the U.S. and seven other countries, monetized through ads, coins and subscription.

Warner Bros. acquired Zach Cregger’s The Flood and fast-tracked it through New Line for Aug. 11, 2028; the sci-fi thriller is positioned as Alien-adjacent with Amblin, Vertigo and Weapons producers on board.

Indie horror’s economics are getting harsher even as production gets easier; the roundtable lays out shrinking crews, sliding rates and a writing process shaped by budget, access and survival. Filmmakers describe no-budget horror as a labor-heavy machine that depends on flexibility, multi-hyphenates and underpaid work to get made.

Artists First signs Alexander Henderson for management; the self-taught writer-director-producer broke out with horror short Mama Agnes and built 60M+ views across his YouTube-driven catalog, and is now pushing grounded horror/supernatural work into film and TV.

Focus Features is mounting a full Oscars push for Obsession after Curry Barker’s horror breakout crossed $500 million-plus worldwide on an estimated $750,000 budget. Inde Navarrette is being positioned for Best Actress, with Barker in play across director, original screenplay, and editing.

Tubi takes Tommy Wiseau’s long-gestating shark pic this Friday, giving Big Shark its first real streaming window after years in limbo.

Inaugural Reaper Film Festival lands Oct. 22 in Los Angeles with three blocks of indie horror shorts, a Women in Film-presented Scythe Award, and a grand-prize pitch slot to Bloodstream TV and Studio Dome for financing and development consideration; official selections also get non-exclusive Bloodstream TV distribution.

Grindstone has domestic rights to Vincent Gallo’s serial-killer pic Golden State Killer; Venice kept it out of competition after Alberto Barbera called it too provocative for the main lineup.

Dead Northern stacks its 2026 York lineup with classics Aliens and Aswang plus new features Wrath of the Gods and Free Buffet; the U.K. genre fest runs Sept. 25-27 and adds a Dead by Daylight-inspired immersive experience.

Nick Kozakis’ Kick On lands a world premiere in TIFF Midnight Madness, giving the Australian thriller a high-profile festival launch with no sale attached.

South London Film Festival runs Sept. 12-27 in Brixton with UK premiere horror short Spilled Milk, executive produced by Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw; the slate also includes awards showcase shorts, networking, and a new Icon Award.

Paramount+ revives Peak Screaming for 2026, with Scary Movie (2026) set to debut on September 3 and the service leaning harder into seasonal horror curation.

Issue 1518 logs 114 active film and TV listings; the genre-heavy stack includes Afterlife with Archie, Crouch End, The Crying Man, A Body in the Woods, and Blasphemous.

Sony sets a Nov. 6 global rollout for Ramayana, the two-part Indian fantasy epic from Prime Focus Studios and Nitesh Tiwari. The release will span multiple international languages, including an English version, with music by Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman.

Cineverse sets Portal to Hell for Digital and VOD on Sept. 8, with Keith David and Richard Kind headlining the indie horror comedy from Trey Holland.

No project is attached, but Gillian Anderson says Robert Eggers is the horror director she most wants to work with and recalls past development conversations with Jason Blum. She says many of the offers she received were haunted-house plays, even as she keeps circling a return to genre.

The Possessed rounds out its cast with Suzy Bemba, Khalil Gharbia and Ji-Min Park as Ena Sendijarević’s 17th-century witch-hunt feature moves toward principal photography in Spain. Chemistry reads forced a script rewrite and a switch into French.

Verve Ventures has boarded North American sales on Jerome Sable’s black-comedy survival title ahead of its Frontières/TIFF: The Market bow. Ontario Creates and Telefilm Canada have already backed the film; producers are in financing and pre-production and are targeting a January 2028 shoot.

Prime Video bought Kill Jackie from Fremantle and Steel Springs Pictures; the series is rolling out by territory, with AMC+ handling the U.S. and a 2026 launch window across multiple markets.

Sony Pictures and Story Kitchen lock film rights to The Drifter, the 2025 pulp thriller video game; multiple writers and directors are now pitching takes. Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg are on producing duties as the adaptation moves into development. The full wire runs every day at screamwire.com, with the deal ledger, market calendar and trailer feed behind it.