Zach Cregger and Steven Spielberg
Ever since 'Backrooms' and 'Obsession' proved internet-born horror could pack theaters with younger audiences, the town has been trying to bottle the same lightning.
In the weeks after those hits, agency assistants were reportedly combing through Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok like truffle pigs, sniffing out the next viral property. One agency vet claimed they'd already flagged "a bunch" of subreddits and short stories as potential films (a Sydney Sweeney project pulled from r/nosleep is reportedly already in the works). That land grab is now producing deals, and two big ones landed within 24 hours of each other:
- 'Siren Head' went to Warner Bros. out of a five-studio bidding war. The property is a towering, rotting cryptid with two sirens for a head, dreamed up by creature designer Trevor Henderson in 2018 (billions of TikTok views since). 'Weapons' director Zach Cregger is co-writing the script with 'Whalefall's' Brian Duffield, who'll direct. The rights alone went for low seven figures, and Cregger's involvement (one of the biggest names in horror right now) is a big part of why studios chased so hard.
- 'The Mandela Catalogue' went to Scott Stuber's United Artists, Spielberg's Amblin, and Amazon MGM a day later, out of an eleven-way bidding war. It's one of the best known titles in analog horror (the found-footage, fake-broadcast corner of YouTube), set in a Wisconsin county invaded by shape-shifting doppelgangers, with well over 100M views.
The two deals take opposite approaches to who's behind the camera: ‘Mandela' hands the job to its creator, with Alex Kister directing his own IP (the same path Kane Parsons took on 'Backrooms'). 'Siren Head' goes the other way, handing the property to two outside filmmakers (Cregger and Duffield) who had no hand in creating it.
