Tag: 20th Century Studios

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Sam Raimi’s Every House is Haunted Gets a New Studio

A Horror Project Finds Its Home

Some movies spend years wandering the development wilderness before finding the right studio. Every House is Haunted has been one of those projects — until this week. Deadline reported that 20th Century Studios has acquired the supernatural thriller from Netflix, ending roughly five years in development limbo at the streamer. Netflix picked up the original script back in 2021, and the film has been waiting for its moment ever since.

Now it has one. And the talent lining up behind it suggests this could be worth the wait.

The Raimi Factor

Producing is Sam Raimi, via Raimi Productions alongside Zainab Azizi. Raimi's name on a horror project still carries genuine weight — the man practically invented the modern horror playbook, and his instincts for supernatural material are unmatched. This move comes on the heels of his team's 20th Century Studios hit Send Help, so the studio-producer relationship is already proven.

Joining the producing ranks: Roy Lee, the veteran horror producer behind Weapons, and Andrew Childs (The Long Walk) for Vertigo Entertainment. Ian Rogers, the author of the source material, executive produces alongside Starlight Media. That's a production bench with serious genre credibility on every chair.

The Source Material Is a Gem

The film is based on Ian Rogers' acclaimed short story "The House on Ashley Avenue," from his Every House is Haunted collection. The premise, per Deadline: an insurance investigator tries to debunk claims that a couple's death was caused by a haunted house — until a psychic and the mysterious occurrences he witnesses with his own eyes challenge his skepticism.

That's a beautiful setup. The skeptic-protagonist is horror's most reliable engine, because the audience gets to be converted along with the character. An insurance investigator — a professional debunker, a man whose entire job is finding the mundane explanation — forced to confront the unexplainable is the kind of premise that writes its own tension. And grounding it in a single house, the Ashley Avenue house, gives it the contained, escalating dread that the best haunted-house films share.

New Directors, New Energy

Directing are Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, the duo behind Netflix's 2024 hit Don't Move — a film that topped the streamer's movie charts for two weeks. They replace previously attached director Corin Hardy and will revise the screenplay (the original script was by Jason Pagan and Andrew Deutschman).

This is a smart handoff. Schindler and Netto proved with Don't Move that they can build sustained, suffocating tension from a simple premise. A haunted-house thriller is exactly the kind of assignment that plays to their strengths: atmosphere, escalation, and the kind of scares that come from what you don't see.

Why the Studio Move Matters

Netflix's loss is theaters' gain

The project languished at Netflix for five years. At 20th Century Studios, it's a theatrical horror film — and theatrical horror is having a moment. Genre fans turn out for well-made supernatural thrillers on the big screen, and the studio clearly sees this as a theatrical play. That ambition alone changes the project's trajectory.

The horror ecosystem is thriving

October is proving it right now. Clayface arrives as DC's horror-tinged offering, and the seasonal appetite for scares extends well beyond Halloween — haunted-house attractions like Bayville Scream Park, returning with five haunted houses, show how deep the cultural hunger for a good fright runs. A well-crafted haunted-house movie with Raimi producing slots directly into that appetite.

Every House is Haunted has franchise bones

The title isn't just a film title — it's a short-story collection, a whole universe of haunted houses. If the first film lands, the material is sitting right there. Studios think in universes now, and Rogers' collection is a ready-made one.

What's Still to Come

Let's be honest about where things stand: no cast has been announced, no release date is set, and the project is in active development with a new studio — not yet in production. Industry talk will now turn to casting, and with Raimi's name attached, expect the announcement to draw real names. The film is officially on the move, and in this business, that's the hardest part.

Five years in limbo would have killed a lesser project. Every House is Haunted survived — and it survived by landing with better backers, sharper directors, and one of horror's defining producers. The release date is still TBA, but the haunting has officially begun. Keep the lights on.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Whalefall: Josh Brolin’s Deep-Sea Survival Thriller Preview

The pitch is three sentences long, and you will not forget it. A young man scuba-dives off the California coast searching for his dead father’s remains. He is swallowed whole by a massive sperm whale. He has one hour of oxygen.

That is Whalefall, arriving in theaters October 16 from 20th Century Studios. The trailer dropped in August, and if the film delivers on its premise, we’re looking at one of the year’s most gripping theatrical experiences.

The Martian Meets 127 Hours

That comparison comes from ComingSoon, and it’s doing honest work. Like The Martian, this is a problem-solving thriller: a smart protagonist, a lethal environment, a clock running down. Like 127 Hours, it’s survival stripped to the bone — one person, one impossible situation, no cavalry coming.

But the emotional engine is pure Whalefall. Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams, isn’t diving for sport. He’s diving for his father, Mitt Gardiner — played by Josh Brolin — whose remains were lost at sea. Inside the whale, with sixty minutes of air, Jay has to use his father’s own survival lessons to get out. Grief as a toolkit. That’s a beautiful, painful idea, and it gives the spectacle a heartbeat. The best survival stories were never really about the environment; they’re about what the character carries in with them. This one wears that on its sleeve, in the best way — a reminder that the most uplifting stories are often the ones that go through the dark first.

The film runs 106 minutes. Tight. That’s the right length for a pressure-cooker — long enough to earn the dread, short enough that nobody gets to breathe.

Duffield Knows This Terrain

Director Brian Duffield co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Kraus, adapting Kraus’s own 2023 novel. That’s a strong sign: the author in the room, shaping the adaptation of his own book. Duffield’s directing credits — Spontaneous and No One Will Save You — show a filmmaker comfortable with high concepts played straight and with real feeling. No One Will Save You in particular was a near-wordless alien-invasion thriller carried almost entirely by craft and one performance. A man alone inside a whale? That’s the same muscle, flexed harder.

And the producing bench is serious: Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment is aboard with Duffield, Jeb Brody, and Allan Mandelbaum. Grazer doesn’t produce small movies by accident. When a producer of that caliber backs a 106-minute survival thriller, it means the script earned it.

The Cast

Austin Abrams carries the film as Jay, and it’s the kind of role that makes careers — alone on screen for long stretches, acting against darkness, water, and a ticking clock. Josh Brolin plays his father Mitt, presumably in the flashbacks and memory sequences that give the survival lessons their weight. Brolin brings instant gravity; you believe a man like that would teach his son how to stay alive. Elisabeth Shue plays Jay’s mother Zara, with John Ortiz, Jane Levy, and Emily Rudd rounding out the cast. Shue is one of those actors who elevates everything she’s in — her presence suggests the family story will hit as hard as the thriller mechanics.

Why Theaters Matter for This One

Some movies you can watch anywhere. This isn’t one of them. A film about being swallowed by a whale — about pressure, darkness, the sound of your own breathing in a mask — wants a dark room and a big screen and an audience holding its breath with you. The trailer already suggests the sound design will be half the experience: creaks, currents, the awful closeness of it. This is a theatrical proposition in the old sense, the kind of big-screen event that reminds you why shared spectacle still matters — though here the voyage is considerably more alarming than a luxury cruise.

October 16 is also well chosen. It’s the heart of fall movie season, when audiences are hungry for something with teeth after the summer’s lighter fare. A survival thriller with prestige credentials and a killer hook should play very well there.

The Honest Unknowns

We’ve seen a trailer, not the film. The premise is airtight, the team is strong, but execution is everything with a concept this extreme. Can 106 minutes inside a whale sustain tension without repeating itself? Can the father-son story land without slowing the thriller? Those are craft questions, and Duffield’s track record suggests he knows exactly what he’s doing. Still — preview means preview. We’ll know on October 16.

Verdict: can’t wait. Whalefall has the year’s best hook, a director who specializes in exactly this kind of tension, and a cast built for it. One hour of oxygen. One hundred six minutes of movie. See it with people who don’t mind holding their breath.