Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest & Roy Lee

American Cinematheque, Monkeypaw Productions and Universal are bringing back No Drama for a second run, backing up to three emerging genre filmmakers with a $50,000 grant pool and a first-look option; finished shorts premiere at Beyond Fest 2027.

Good Fiend Films is spinning up Good Fiend Lit, a new division targeting genre literature and immersive storytelling across horror, sci-fi and fantasy; Natasha Preston will oversee the launch alongside Dastmalchian.

Paramount Television Studios and Iron Ocean are adapting Keith Rosson’s vampire novel Coffin Moon for TV; Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue board to adapt and showrun, with Jessica Biel producing under Iron Ocean’s first-look deal.

Fantastic Fest’s 2026 winners list put Ghost in the Cell, Bloody Tennis and the rest of the year’s genre slate on the board. Father Figure also left the fest with a $100,00 Chroma financing award, a distribution deal and a 2027 Fantastic Fest premiere.

Austin Film Society has announced more than $300,000 in filmmaker grant awards as it launches Texas Lights, a new statewide funding program supporting emerging Texas filmmakers. The initiative builds on 30 years of AFS Grants, which have awarded more than $3.3 million to independent film projects.

Ember Production Limited has N.E.S.T. Project in production in the U.K.; the post-apocalyptic sci-fi-horror feature is targeting a late-2026 wrap and 2027 festival cut.

Shudder has acquired Finnish horror-comedy Red Snow out of Fantastic Fest and will stream it Dec. 15; Ilja Rautsi’s vampire-Santa feature bowed in the fest’s world premiere slot.

Sub-$80 million total budget attached to Robert Eggers' Romeo and Juliet at Focus Features; the studio beat A24, Sony and Warner Bros. and the film is now his next production after Werwulf.

‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ are being treated as black swans, not a replicable roadmap; financiers at San Sebastián say the next breakout won’t necessarily come from YouTube IP or horror.

Tubi’s low-cost horror-heavy library helped turn the FAST service into a scale player; Fox’s pending Roku buy could put the platform in front of 100M+ screens.

First R-rated Godzilla film in franchise history lands an R for violent content and bloody images; GKIDS sets North American release for Nov. 6, 2026 after Japan bows Nov. 3, with Takashi Yamazaki returning and the sequel shot as Japan’s first IMAX production.

Hulu sets Soulm8te as the M3GAN spinoff’s first subscription home on Oct. 1; the Blumhouse Atomic Monster title now opens Huluween after its scrapped theatrical path and digital detour.

MUBI sets Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma for Oct. 2 streaming and rolls out a real VHS campaign with Beyond Fest screenings and microcinema tour dates through Oct. 20.

AI shaved eight days off a major battlefield sequence on Michel Hazanavicius’ WWI-set The Third Hand, collapsing a 10-day shoot into two; Goodfellas says the tech made the mad-scientist body-horror setup cheaper and faster to mount.

Antenna Releasing launches Joseph Scrimshaw’s horror-comedy roadshow with a limited theatrical expansion on Oct. 2 and VOD on Oct. 23.

The cult sequel is heading to theaters and VOD after festival play at Fantastic Fest, Sitges, BIFAN and Fantaspoa, extending the Deathgasm franchise back into the marketplace.

Texas Lights awards an inaugural grant to FANGORIA Studios’ SITORA, giving Diffan Sina Norman new funding for the weretiger horror feature as part of the program’s first cohort.

Roy Lee is lining up a new Silent Hill take off the Resident Evil breakout; the horror producer’s next game adaptation is still early and talent-light.

IFC and Shudder push Breeder from Oct. 16 to Oct. 28; the Tribeca-premiered horror debut from Alex Goyette now opens later in the month after landing an R for disturbing material, violence, graphic nudity and language.

A24 pushes Jeremy Saulnier’s Slayground teaser online after the Resident Evil-only rollout; the title shifted from October, RunLikeHell.com is live, and a fall launch remains in play.