Toronto International Film Festival & A24

A24 takes worldwide rights to SCP Foundation and targets a 2027 theatrical release with Spooky Pictures and Image Nation Studios. Roy Lee and Steven Schneider board as producers as the internet-born horror/sci-fi universe gets its first big-screen adaptation after A24's Backrooms breakout.

11-studio bidding war lands Amazon MGM, United Artists and Amblin on June 9, 2028 for analog-horror breakout The Mandela Catalogue; Alex Kister directs from his adapted script with Tyler Clifton.

Blumhouse Atomic Monster, Divide/Conquer and Spooky Pictures back Josh Giuliano's next horror feature Occupant, with Focus Features holding worldwide rights and Universal Pictures International on foreign. Giuliano follows his TIFF Midnight Madness debut River with another young-digital-native genre play.

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.

Kid Cudi rolls Wrong Number into production in Los Angeles, with Barbie Ferreira, Lucy Barrett, Dewayne Perkins, Clifton Powell, and Laura Harrier in the cast; Mescudi writes, directs, and scores the horror thriller for Mad Solar.

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.

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.

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.

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

Dark Vintage Pictures’ The Crawlspace is nearly ready after a summer 2024 shoot; Luke Walters writes and stars, with Brian Kilby directing the Ada Witch-legend horror pic.

Seven-figure Black List script sale sends The Waffle House Index to Apple Original Films; Inde Navarrette stars and exec produces, with Louis Paxton directing and Plan B producing.

Premiere Entertainment Group launches Kellan Lutz-led survival thriller The Rescue to international buyers at TIFF; Darren Simmonds and Jared van Berkel direct from van Berkel’s script, with New Zealand production set for January 2027.

$46M worldwide debut for Practical Magic 2, including $30M domestic and $16M overseas; Warner Bros./Alcon lands in line with Bullock-led comps, but the sequel lags the studio's recent post-Labor Day genre breakouts.

Telefilm is using TIFF: The Market to push Canada’s treaty co-production pipeline; 53 official co-productions last year carried a combined C$371M budget, while modernized treaties and new talks widen access to tax credits and financing.

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.

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.

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.

Soho Horror Film Festival kicks off its 2026 feature slate for the November return, with a fully accessible online edition following the London run.

TIFF slots Samjad’s vampire revenge hybrid Half for its world premiere; the martial-arts western blends bloodline lore, high-speed chases and creature-feature energy. Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj star.

Shudder sets Paolo Strippoli's Italian folk horror film for a Nov. 27 streaming bow after a Venice premiere and Fantastic Fest awards; Michele Riondino stars as a teacher pulled into a town-cult nightmare.

Saban Films acquires U.S. rights to Alphas and lines up an early 2027 theatrical release. The long-gestating creature feature pits great white sharks against killer whales, with Martin Henderson, Teagan Croft and Charlotte Vega leading.

Highland Film Group is co-financing White and selling it out of TIFF after pre-selling multiple territories; Carla Woodcock, Kate Beckinsale and Katherine McNamara are aboard for Jake West’s shark-survival thriller. Dan Schaffer adapts his cult comic Dogwitch.

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.

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.

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.

Well Go USA opens Joko Anwar's prison-set supernatural killer pic in U.S. theaters Oct. 2; the 106-minute hybrid mixes horror, black comedy, and thriller beats with Abimana Aryasatya and Tia Hasibuan producing.

TIFF buyers are circling Courteney Cox’s true-crime feature Evil Genius, while FilmNation is showing horror footage from Bill Hader-directed They Know and A24 is shopping a three-title buyers’ slate on the sidelines.

CJ ENM Hong Kong has taken Taiwan and Southeast Asia rights to The Mage, the Pang Brothers’ $3M supernatural horror feature; rollout starts Oct. 8, with The Mage 2 already in post.

$20M post-apocalyptic thriller Parish locks a wave of international pre-sales in Toronto ahead of a Minnesota shoot next week; Concourse Media has Germany/Austria/Switzerland with Wild Bunch, Latin America with Energia and Italy with Eagle Pictures, while Archetype Media Finance backs the package.

Invention Studios boards Krishnarjun Bhattacharya’s Indian fantasy-horror feature Tongue, with Nicholas Weinstock joining Divya D’Souza and Sayani Gupta as the project moves through the South Asian Canadian Film Federation’s lab and TIFF’s co-production market. The film follows two sisters trapped in their grandmother’s mansion as monstrous creatures and lethal traps lead them toward the family’s buried secrets.

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.

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.

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.

Tom Six’s black-and-white horror satire The Onania Club still has no distributor seven years after wrapping, with the filmmaker now saying the movie may not surface until after his death. The standoff underscores how backlash risk and distribution caution are freezing out ultra-provocative genre titles.

Peacock sets Crystal Lake for Oct. 15, 2026 as an eight-episode Friday the 13th prequel from A24 and Brad Caleb Kane. Linda Cardellini leads the cast as Pam Voorhees, with a stacked supporting and recurring ensemble plus EPs Roy Lee and Marc Toberoff.

Freestyle Digital Media has taken VOD rights to A Bloody Mess from Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group. The move gives the digital distributor a fresh genre-adjacent title for its release pipeline.