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BlumFest revealed Craig Zobel as the director for the adaptation of James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera’s Something is Killing the Children, while also debuting the trailer for The Exorcist: Martyrs, and teasing upcoming projects including Seasons, RoboCop, Molepeople, and more.
The two-hour Friday night panel featured an A-List lineup, including Mike Flanagan, James Wan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Harbour, LaKeith Stanfield, Curry Barker, and Kristen Bell. About halfway through the panel, the entire 2027 lineup was revealed, including River (Jan. 15), The Revenge of Llorona (Feb. 26), The Exorcist: Martyrs, Anything but Ghosts (May 7), Paranormal Activity (May 21), The Blair Witch Project (Sept. 24), and Sleepover and Seasons (Nov. 12). The list also included a currently untitled film set for August 2027.
During a panel, which served as a victory lap for Blumhouse Atomic Monster’s box office hits Backrooms and Obsession, producer and Blumhouse co-founder Jason Blum teased what is ahead for the studio.
“It’s been an incredible year, and what’s so cool about the movies you listed is how different they all are. Everybody has a different idea about what’s scary, and that is what I love about horror,” he said. “We want to work with filmmakers who never stop surprising you. And a year like we’ve had, with the help of movies like Obsession, gives us more opportunity to take more chances, and you’ll get a taste of those chances and risks and weird stuff tonight.”
Earlier in the day, IDW Dark and Blumhouse announced they were teaming on a Happy Death Day comic series from Blumhouse and IDW Dark, with writer Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash) attached to translate the time-loop slasher and expand its mystery ahead of a third movie.
Read below for more on what was unveiled during BlumFest 2026 at New York Comic Con.
Anything But Ghosts
Towards the end of the panel, Barker and Cooper Tomlinson were brought out on stage, and briefly discussed how his life had changed in just a year. After reflecting on Obsession and the nature of their partnership, the duo teased Anything But Ghosts, which follows ghost hunter con artists who “get a huge job, a bigger one than they’ve ever gotten before. But it’s a real ghost, so they have to step up and be the thing that they promised.” The film will see Barker co-star with Tomlinson.
“I need him on camera with me. We wrote this together thinking this will be the movie that we starred in together, an homage to what we’ve been doing online,” Barker said. “I didn’t write Obsession with me necessarily in mind, but we knew we had to do these two characters.”
Barker also expressed that the film will take a similar approach to their work on Obsession, trying to subvert horror film tropes and expectations. “I think, just me as an audience member who’s been watching horror movies my entire life, you can take the blueprint of a horror movie, and know what audiences are expecting. You can actually use that to your advantage to say, if I’m an audience member and I’m watching this and I know what’s going to happen next, how can I subvert that? You can expect that same attitude as Anything But Ghosts.”
Amanda the Adventurer
Among the new partnerships announced at the panel was a deal with Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, the founder and former host of the “Theory” Channels on YouTube. Patrick will work with the studio to develop new films based on indie games and horror channels to bring those stories to the big screen. “We are giving them the spotlight they deserve,” Patrick said during the panel.
The first announced project is a feature film based on DreadXP’s indie video game Amanda the Adventurer. A teaser at the panel also previewed footage of the online horror phenomenon, a series of clips that combines the animated children’s show-esque story with unsettling interstitials. “We are currently in talks with writers and directors, so more is coming soon. We’re moving really fast on that one,” Patrick said.
Molepeople & Seasons
Among the newer projects is RoboCop, which Wan noted is currently being developed as a series for Amazon Prime with the original writer Edward Neumeier and Dan Stevens in the titular role. The second major project out of the studio is Rob Savage’s next Blumhouse Atomic Monster film Molepeople, starring Lakeith Stanfield, his return to the studio following the game-changing Get Out. Described by Savage “as a subterranean horror movie that’s going to scare the living shit out of you,” the film will be in the vein of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, with Savage noting the movie will begin filming very soon.
Speaking to the connections between Get Out and Molepeople, Stanfield shared that the 2018 Jordan Peele film “was fantastical on the outside, but there was some heart in it on the inside, and I think that’s the kind of thing I like to replicate and continue to have in my career.” He added, “I found something that I think can be engaging, action-packed, cool, fun, and also a little bit of commentary, too.”
Wan also teased a new movie with Companion director Drew Hancock, Seasons, which is based on the “No Sleep” subreddit story. “It’s a horror movie that takes place over four seasons,” the producer told the audience after a video featuring Hancock on set with Ron Perlman. Additional titles teased included The Blair Witch Project, with Dylan Clark set to helm, and a new Paranormal Activity entry from Undertones director Ian Tuason, with a video from the director hyping the entry.
“Paranormal Activity is such an emotional movie for me because it’s really how Blumhouse started, and it really gave birth to everything that we’ve done,” said Blum. “I hate the idea that you keep making movies and then drive it into the ground, so we stopped making them for a long time. What got me excited is that my partner, who, in my humble opinion, has created three of the greatest horror franchises of all time, which no one else has ever done, came to me.”
Added the producer: “For me, it was enough to hear that, and that’s really what made it happen. People ask me how do you choose what movies go to Blumhouse or Atomic Monster? It’s a very simple answer. Whatever James doesn’t want, we do.”
Wan also spoke about returning to the Saw universe, telling the NYCC crowd that going with director Mike P. Nelson was about “his sensibility” and how he “really prioritizes surprises in his movies. I think the Saw movies are full of surprises, right? It’s all twists and turns. It’s not just about the traps. It’s about the moral dilemma. It’s about the visual style.”
Something Is Killing the Children
As part of the final portion of the jam-packed panel, Something Is Killing the Children creator James Dickinson, as well as the newly announced director Noel, appeared on stage to tease their upcoming title. “My first conversation with Jason about this was really incredible. We have been building the world on Instagram for about seven years now, and we’ve now reached over five million readers around the world. But we’ve always known that this is a franchise that had the potential to reach a much, much bigger audience,” Dickinson said.
The duo was pretty mum on when production would start or any filming locations but they did briefly tease what they’re excited about with the characters. While Dickinson confirmed fans can expect to see Octo — the story’s stuffed Octopus with a monster trapped inside it — Noel is quite excited for how fans will experience the story’s protagonist, Erica Slaughter. The director described her as “such a powerful badass” and not only strong, but able to “lift axes and dismember 15-foot monsters,” which the film will get to illustrate. “We also see how funny she can be and that Erica, in the midst of something killing the children, has this very bone-dry humor we’ve really got to nail.”
Dickinson also confirmed there would be children killed onscreen. “The first time that Jason and I talked about it, about 20 to 30 minutes into the conversation, I was like, ‘You’ve, like, read the copy? This would be intense,’” he recalled. “It’s called Something Is Killing the Children, and, you know, I promise you, there are kids who die.”
Violent Night 2
Violent Night stars David Harbour and Kristen Bell were also joined on stage by director Tommy Wirkola and producer Kelly McCormick. While discussing his return to an unusual role, Harbour shared that the sequel happened because there’s “a lot of really rabid, crazy fans out there, and they wanted to know more about Santa’s backstory specifically, and how he got those tattoos and lots of different things. I would go to cons like this, and people would bring up all these questions, and I would video them, and I would send them to Kelly and Tommy. They wrote a script, and it’s really exciting to bring you guys some more Santa.”
Bell, who joins the sequel as Mrs. Klaus, shared she was “so confused” she got the call for the role, as she wasn’t aware of a second film. But says her character, “Mrs. Klaus is substantially older than Mr. Klaus. Take that how you will, but if you’re looking at the lore of who came first — and I know the first one, there were sort of moments where you saw his Viking mythology v you’ll get a taste of what Mrs. Klaus’ elven history is.”
The section featured several clips, including an intense multi-minute fight sequence where Harbour’s Santa takes on some henchmen with the tools of a bakery, ending in someone getting cooked, literally. Another clip teased a few more sequences in a moment from the trailer, which sees Bell’s Mrs. Klaus arrive to save the day. Speaking to how she prepared for the role, Bell shared that she had a stunt double, but also trained for five weeks ahead of filming.
“It was some of the most fun I had ever had at 87North working with stunt people who know exactly what they’re doing and are teaching me about my body and how I can move. I had always known that the physicality of the character is really important, just as important as the words you’re saying,” she said. “Do you take up space in a room, or do you sit back? Are you imposing? What you’re doing with your body can really tell a story. I feel like a billion bucks having learned this choreo.”
“It’s basically Miracle on 34th Street with an enormous bloody hammer,” teased Harbour, later revealing, alongside the film’s director, that the original film and its sequel are influenced by Home Alone and Die Hard, which will get its own vent nod in Violent Night 2.
The Exorcist: Martyrs
As part of a brief panel that revealed the first trailer for the film, out March 12, Flanagan and Ejiofor teased a movie that is “so god damn scary.”
“I can feel it on set. It was freaking me out in my chair,” Flanagan said. “This movie is unlike any other Exorcist movie that’s ever been made, which was something that we were really determined, all of us, to do from the very beginning. It was to take this franchise in a completely different direction. One of the things that we all agreed on going in was that it had to be scary.”
Speaking to expanding the larger Exorcist universe, Flannigan shared that, “I’ve been lucky enough or crazy enough in my career now several times to step into a franchise underneath a monolithic titan of the genre and have to carry that torch a little further.”
He continued: “It is really intimidating because The Exorcist is The Exorcist, and it’s not just [William] Friedkin’s masterpiece that we’re stepping into the shadow of. It’s an entire franchise that has struck out in different directions every time they come to bat. It’s like, they’re going this way, they’re going that way. You’re seeing all sorts of different expressions of this central idea — and it wasn’t just The Exorcist. We talked an awful lot about The Exorcist III, for example. I think [it’s] one of the most underrated, underappreciated films in the franchise. The hallway scene, iconic.”
For Ejiofor, the terror is partly in the feeling. “I think with these, with the way that it talks about that feeling, how do you describe it? That feeling that’s sort of there that you feel can sometimes be a force, a malevolent force that’s just around. Sometimes you can put a name to it. Sometimes you can’t, but you can just sort of feel it around you. And with this, it really felt like it was entering.”
River
Following a video message from writer-director Joshua Giuliano, who introduced the film’s trailer but wasn’t present because he is currently prepping his next Blumhouse film Occupant in Vancouver, star of the film Jessica Rothe came to tease the river thriller. Also starring Jane Levy, Max Mattern, and Dane DiLiegro, the film is “wild,” but also a family drama, with “heartfelt moments, terror, a psychotic six-foot-eight ripped, super hot but very scary man,” according to the actress.
Speaking to the demands of filming a movie so heavily based in water, she told the NYCC crowd that 14 of the 22 shoot days were on the water. “It’s such a gift as an actor to be able to be in the physical element that you’re actually supposed to be in. Because the fear you see on my face when Dane, our incredible masked man, is swimming after me, that’s real fear because I was like, that man is going to catch me. He is definitely faster than I am, and it just adds another element of reality and terror and fun.”
Horror Short With Creator Heidi Wong
Blumhouse Atomic Monster also announced a new short film development deal with multimedia horror storyteller and content creator Heidi Wong. Known as “The Horror Queen,” Wong will create a new horror short film for Blumhouse Atomic Monster through her new development deal. Speaking to tapping creators, Blum noted that what “Kane [Pareons] did and what Curry did, original voices and a fresh point of view and a new take on something we haven’t seen before, is more effective in the world than it’s ever been, which is exciting. It’s exciting for me. It’s much more fun to do what I do. It’s more fun to watch what we all watch, as a result of that. As we continue going forward, we’re always trying to find new, different, original ways to scare all of you and all of us.”
While speaking about the deal on stage with Wong, Blum noted that they are looking to “develop, and hopefully make [the short] into a future film.” While Wong was pretty mum about the plot, she noted her butterfly dress and social media easter eggs hinted at the short’s focus. “It’s inspired by Eastern mythology and folklore,” she told the crowd. “I grew up in Asia, so it’s very close to me, and to have Blumhouse’s support really means so much.”
English (US) ·