Horror movies

The distributor for Strange Darling has sued its marketing partner on the horror fan-favorite for fraud and breach of contract.

Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Productions, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that seeks at least $10 million, accuses Spellbinder of failing to contribute its half of the $2 million marketing spend for the film. It also claims that the company kept some of the funds and bought social media followers and views on various platforms to create the appearance of a successful marketing campaign.

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Strange Darling, a nonlinear serial killer thriller, premiered in August on over 1,100 screens across the U.S. It made $1.1 million its opening weekend, significantly below box office expectations for its media campaign, reviews and broad theatrical release. Miramax financed the film, which has grossed roughly $3 million, on a budget of at least $4 million.

After acquiring distribution rights to the film, Magenta approached Global Pictures Media, a now-defunct company that specializes in financing theatrical release of films, to fund P&A (prints and advertising) for the movie only to be told that the firm shut down and that its principals were raising capital to launch Spellbinder, the complaint says. They agreed to evenly split $2 million in marketing spend, with Magenta wiring Spellbinder the funds to start the campaign.

The lawsuit claims that Spellbinder in June failed to deliver a contractually obligated dashboard providing live updates on media spend and throttled back the campaign, which led Magenta to request invoices to confirm spending up to that date. Later that month, the distributor learned that Spellbinder brought in Myosin, another marketing agency, to assist.

In July, Magenta was told that the media purchases laid out in the contract had not yet been negotiated or purchased in breach of the deal, the lawsuit says. Spellbinder allegedly said that it required more funds despite it being responsible for half of the costs.

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The lawsuit claims that Myosin, which is named in the complaint, commingled funds with Spellbinder. The ownership of the two companies are “identical,” states the lawsuit, which alleges that they “operate as a single entity and identify themselves separately only for purposes of evading liability.” Sean Clayton is a founder of both companies, according to the complaint.

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Magenta also claims that Spellbinder purchased followers on Instagram to make it appear that it had enacted a successful marketing campaign. The platform flagged nearly 25,000 of the movie’s 27,000 followers as likely being bots, according to the complaint.

“Further, it appears that Spellbinder purchased views of videos posted to Plaintiff’s YouTube account,” the lawsuit states. “These videos have a high number of views but extremely limited engagement, which suggests that the views are not genuine. The few comments on these YouTube videos also appear to have been generated by bots. Additionally, despite gaining millions of views on the top videos posted to the account, the account itself has generated less than 500 subscribers.”

‘FILMFEAR’ COLLECTION – STREAMING ON CHANNEL 4 UNTIL 2ND NOVEMBER

• ENYS MEN
• SMILE
• IN THE EARTH
• THE LODGE
• AMULET
• FIRESTARTER
• BULL
• X
• ALONE
• WEREWOLVES WITHIN
• A BANQUET
• THE THING (2011)
• THE INNOCENTS
• FRESH

‘COMPLETELY BEN WHEATLEY’ COLLECTION – STREAMING ON CHANNEL 4 UNTIL 15TH NOVEMBER

• DOWN TERRACE
• KILL LIST
• SIGHTSEERS
• A FIELD IN ENGLAND
• HIGH-RISE
• FREE FIRE
• THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY

Back in 2021, Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and director Scott Derrickson brought us an adaptation of the Joe Hill short story The Black Phone (check out our review HERE) that appeared to tell a complete story that would stand on its own… but the film was made on a budget of around $16 million and earned over $160 million at the global box office. So, on October 17, 2025, we’ll be getting The Black Phone 2. In a video that was shown to New York Comic Con attendees during the Blumhouse panel there, Derrickson said that he sees the sequel as a high school coming-of-age film.

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Derrickson wrote the screenplay for the first film with C. Robert Cargill, and Derrickson and Cargill have written the screenplay for The Black Phone 2 as well. They’re also producing the sequel with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Ryan Turek. The sequel will see the return of Mason Thames (How to Train Your Dragon) as Finney Shaw, Madeleine McGraw (Secrets of Sulphur Springs) as Finney’s sister Gwen, Jeremy Davies (Justified) as their dad Terrence, and Miguel Mora, whose only previous credit is The Black Phone, as Robin, a friend of Finney’s who was killed in the first movie. Ethan Hawke (Moon Knight) will be reprising the role of the child-killer known as The Grabber. One new addition to the cast is Demián Bichir of The Hateful Eight.

Blum told NYCC attendees, “When did movie did well, [I asked the filmmakers], ‘Can we figure out a sequel? Some directors say yes, some directors say no. Scott said, ‘Let me and Cargill think about it.’” Derrickson and Cargill eventually told him they could make a sequel if Hawke and the rest of the original cast could return. Blum said, “And that was music to my ears.“

Derrickson couldn’t make it to the Comic Con because he’s in pre-production on The Black Phone 2 in Toronto, but in a pre-recorded video that was shown, he said, “I didn’t really feel any obligation to do a sequel to The Black Phone, but I got excited by an idea that [author] Joe Hill sent me shortly after the release of the first film. And what I can also tell you is that in the same way that The Black Phone was a middle school coming-of-age film, this is a high school coming-of-age film.” He added that, “I’m hoping to make a film as good as, if not better than, the first one.“

When Godzilla Minus One hit theaters, no one could have seen just how big the movie would become. The project ushered in a new era for Toho as the Japanese company took Godzilla back to basics. With director Takashi Yamazaki at the helm, the movie has gone on to become one of the best in Godzilla’s history. Much of its success came on the back of its director, and now, it seems like Yamazaki is interested in revisiting the IP so long as he can remake a classic Godzilla film.

The confession comes from Yamazaki directly as the director appeared at New York Comic Con. It was there guests like Kaiju United got to learn more about movie monsters, and Yamazaki admitted he is interested in remaking Godzilla vs Hedorah.

“I think that for its time, Hedorah was a very cutting-edge kaiju. Thinking about the type of visual expression we can do with technology and how far it’s come today – I’m imagining how it would move, and I think that would be a really cool remake,” the director shared. And as you can imagine, the Godzilla fandom is now begging for Toho to greenlight such a movie for Yamazaki.

While there’s no telling if or when a certain other Black vampire film will make its way into theaters, the first trailer for writer / director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is here, and it looks sick as hell.

We’ve seen Coogler direct powerful pieces of dramatic social commentary like Fruitvale Station and blockbuster genre features like the Black Panther films, but he’s turning to straight horror with his latest project. Set in the 1930s Jim Crow South, Sinners revolves around twin brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their small-town home hoping to start new lives, only to find something deeply sinister waiting for them. In the daytime, there’s an unsettling presence lurking in the shadows that keeps the townsfolk (Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and Li Jun Li) looking over their shoulders.

Trailer

In the wake of the film’s World Premiere at Fantastic Fest this Sunday, September 22, Benjamin Barfoot’s horror movie Daddy’s Head is coming to Shudder on October 11.

Watch the official trailer for Daddy’s Head below.

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In the film, “In the wake of his father’s untimely death, a young boy is left in the eerie solitude of a sprawling country estate with his newly widowed stepmother. Struggling to navigate the overwhelming task of parenthood, his stepmother grows distant, leaving their fragile bond at risk of collapse. Amidst the growing tension, the boy begins to hear unsettling sounds echoing through the corridors, and is soon haunted by the presence of a grotesque creature bearing a disturbingly familiar resemblance to his late father.

Trailer

Warning: spoilers ahead!

The Danish director of the original Speak No Evil has hit out at the new remake for rewriting the “entire ending”, saying: “I don’t know what it is about Americans”.

Speak No Evil – which is an American remake of the 2022 Danish film of the same name – was released in cinemas on September 13. Written and directed by James Watkins (The Woman In Black, Eden Lake), the film stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi and Scoot McNairy.

Now, the director of the original, Christian Tafdrup, has criticised the film’s remake for a number of significant changes.

The remake changes the nationalities of the families to British and American and Watkins has divided fans by completely changing the ending to the film.

And that is where I am leaving it until I've seen both. If you are discussing spoilers innyhe comments, please us the spoiler tags - ! in a triangle in the standard web interface.