Netflix & Toronto International Film Festival

Pluto Film boards sales on Agata Trzebuchowska’s horror debut Sick ahead of its Fantastic Fest world premiere and Sitges launch. The Polish coming-of-age chiller, produced by Lumisenta, enters the genre market with festival heat already attached.

Precious Metal Productions and Black Fawn Distribution have locked a three-picture Canadian genre slate; the first film is a Christopher Giroux-directed horror feature targeting an early 2027 start.

Paramount Primal has acquired Nick Cutter’s The Troop for feature adaptation; Chris Basler is writing, with Lyrical Media producing as the label keeps building its horror slate.

Principal photography starts at the end of September in Lancashire on docu-horror Pendle 1612, with Maddie Evans leading as one of three young women pulled into the legacy of Britain’s 1612 witch trials. Eleven Eleven Pictures is producing; Liam and Kyle Bashford write-direct.

Scarlett Johansson plays a cop-mother whose case drags her back to a Satanic serial-killer bust and a new possession crisis; Chiwetel Ejiofor, Laurence Fishburne and Diane Lane fill out Mike Flanagan's reboot package.

Blizzard has a new Diablo animated series headed to Netflix, extending the dark-fantasy IP into streaming animation. The announcement also tees up Diablo V, keeping the franchise’s game slate and screen strategy moving in tandem.

Jon Cohen exits Bad Robot to run Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s Wonderlab, the Sony first-look genre banner already packaging Metal Gear Solid, The Earthling and a Freaks sequel.

Principal photography wraps on Spencer Keller’s feature debut When Emma Came Home, a psychological horror about a missing girl whose return triggers a fractured murder mystery; Keller built his name on viral horror shorts.

Shudder sets an Oct. 9, 2026 premiere for V.H.S. Mixtape; Ernest Dickerson anchors the anthology with Mike Ferguson, RZA, David Moreau, Renee Zhan, Tobias Forge and GWAR all on deck.

Vertical lands U.S. rights to the $100M Cliffhanger reboot and targets spring 2027 theatrical after Row K’s collapse left the Jaume Collet-Serra pic stranded; financing came via international pre-sales and private investment.

Vernon Wells boards Witchcraft: The Lantern of Light, the next occult chapter in the long-running Witchcraft franchise. The casting keeps the indie horror series active as the new installment takes shape.

Toronto Centrepiece premiere Inherit reunites Davika Hoorne and Banjong Pisanthanakun on a Thai psychological horror adaptation, with Hoorne playing a centuries-old demon-possessed grandmother. The production leans on practical locations and doubles down on Thailand’s exportable ghost-story lane.

Midnight Madness premiere Kick On pushes a practical-effects, real-stunts action-horror package from Nick Kozakis, with Markella Kavenagh and Nikolai Nikolaeff leading a 20-day shoot with 1,536 setups. Umbrella is set for the Australia-New Zealand theatrical rollout, with additional release handling coming from Blue Finch.

Mayhem locks its 22nd edition at Broadway, Nottingham with previews, classics and shorts; openers include Grind and No Way Down, while closing-night picks span Mārama, Gaua, The Whisper and Crawlers.

Celluloid Screams locks Onslaught to open and The Fox to close its 2026 edition; Larry Fessenden is set for a monster quadrilogy spotlight, with The Adams Family also on the bill.

Highland Film Group has locked a raft of international sales on The Good Samaritan ahead of fall production, with Daisy Ridley, Lucien Laviscount, Josh Duhamel and Sharlto Copley set to star. CAA Media Finance and UTA are on U.S. domestic; Robert MacLean’s Tribune Pictures is financing the action-thriller.

Luke Speakman boards The Heretiks, a Fantastic Fest-bound invasion horror from Hellraiser writers Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins; Gregg Bishop directs.

Untitled live-action Stranger Things spinoff stays in development as Netflix readies a filmed version of The First Shadow for future streaming and rolls out Tales From ’85 Season 2. The franchise keeps expanding across live action, stage, comics and animation, with multiple returning voice cast members locked in.

VMI International is launching TIFF Market sales on Cassi, the murderous obsession thriller from Josh Webber starring Dove Cameron and RJ Mitte; the completed pic was previously known as Love Me Dead.

Neon’s wide U.S. gamble on Na Hong-jin’s Korean sci-fi thriller pays off with a $5 million five-day opening, the biggest domestic debut ever for a Korean film and the distributor’s largest international launch; the film has already banked $35 million in South Korea.

Freestyle Digital Media lands VOD rights to A Bloody Mess and lines up a limited Sept. 18 theatrical bow in New York, Los Angeles and Boston before a fall 2026 digital rollout.

Warner Bros. opened Practical Magic 2 to A$2.3M on 478 Australian screens, or A$3M with previews, ending Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s six-week run at the top. The sequel’s start gives the studio a new box-office win even as the title remains squarely in legacy-IP territory.

Jessica Rothe and Chris Landon have the third Happy Death Day story fully broken and are waiting on Universal and Blumhouse to put up financing; the sequel is back in active development after River.

Courteney Cox is openly eyeing the Scream 8 chair while Spyglass and Paramount keep the sequel in script phase with Lilla and Nora Zuckerman writing. Scream 7’s $214 million global haul against a $45 million budget leaves the franchise at its commercial peak even as the director slot stays open.

¥40.21B Japan cume on nearly 27.4M tickets; Infinity Castle Part 1 hits Netflix in the U.S. Sept. 28 and Crunchyroll in India, extending Demon Slayer’s record-setting theatrical run into streaming.

Nathan Baesel confirms Leslie Vernon will return in Behind the Mask II, nearly 20 years after the original; Robert Englund and David Howard Thornton have joined, with the sequel retaining its meta premise that horror icons exist as real figures.

Season 1 scripts are done and King has signed off; Mike Flanagan still has no official home or greenlight, but the five-season/two-movie plan keeps moving.

Season 2 is filming in Belfast with Colin Morgan, Madeleine Mantock and Christian Cooke leading the BBC’s real-time thriller as the action shifts to a Belfast-to-Liverpool passenger ferry under cyber-attack. Element Pictures now fronts the series, with Fremantle handling global sales after Euston Films was shuttered.

Wrapped principal photography in London; Double Dutch International is launching TIFF market sales on the Craig Fairbrass sequel, with Taz Skylar, Orli Shuka and Jason Maza boarding the cast. Neil Linpow directs from a Greg Hall and George Russo script; the project extends Phillip Barantini’s Villain.

Shudder slots Nicholas Pineda's found-footage debut Infirmary into an Oct. 2 Season of Screams launch after its Dances With Films New York world premiere; the streamer is using the early-October window for a festival pickup with trailer support.