Horror’s latest business story is not simply that familiar monsters and online urban legends are attracting studio attention. It is that the people shaping those scares—directors, writers, illustrators, producers and digital creators—are being treated as increasingly valuable creative anchors in their own right.
Verve has positioned itself squarely in that shift. The talent and literary firm says its horror transactions for clients working as writers, producers, directors and actors helped raise revenue by nearly 20% for a second straight year. Its recent slate also offers a useful snapshot of where the genre is finding momentum: revived studio properties, internet-native horror concepts, gaming-adjacent audiences, and short-form stories with potential to become film and television.
That is a meaningful distinction from the old shorthand that horror is driven only by a marketable hook. A killer premise still matters enormously. But the pattern in these deals suggests that buyers also want creative stewards with a proven ability to turn a premise, a pre-existing fandom or a strange piece of online mythology into a durable screen world.
A genre business built around creative ownership
The clearest example is the competition for film and television adaptation licenses tied to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Verve represented the rights holders in an auction that drew bids from 101 Studios, Amazon MGM, Blumhouse, Neon, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Universal. A24 ultimately secured the rights, with Curry Barker attached to direct a film and Glen Powell set to produce a television series inspired by Leatherface.
An adaptation license is the permission to create a new work based on an existing intellectual property, or IP. In practical terms, control of that license determines who can build new films or series around a recognized name, setting and characters. It is why an auction for a long-running horror property can bring together companies with very different business models: the winning bidder is not only purchasing access to a title, but the opportunity to shape its next public identity.
The Chainsaw transaction also underlines the appeal of pairing established IP with a filmmaker whose name already carries genre relevance. Barker’s Obsession was among the horror films whose summer box-office results helped fuel discussion about digital creators and internet-era genre storytelling. Attaching such a director to an iconic property creates a bridge between legacy recognition and a newer audience’s attention.
For fans, that can be both encouraging and sobering. A familiar logo alone does not settle the question of tone, execution or whether a new entry will feel connected to what audiences value about the original. The creative team is where those decisions begin. The business is increasingly acting as if viewers understand that difference.
From online nightmares to studio development
The growth path for Trevor Henderson’s Siren Head illustrates another part of the current horror pipeline. Henderson, a Canadian illustrator and world-builder, sold the macabre digital-first story to Warner Bros. in July as a feature film to be co-written by Zach Cregger. Henderson was also described as an early beneficiary of the rise of Backrooms-style interest.
Digital-first does not merely mean that an idea happened to appear online. It describes work that reaches an audience through internet-native circulation before it is developed for traditional screen formats. Its value can include an existing visual identity, evidence that viewers react to the concept and a community already familiar with its rules. Those are useful assets, but they do not automatically make an adaptation easy.
Short online horror often thrives on ambiguity, compression and an image that lingers after the viewer scrolls away. A feature film needs more: characters, escalation, pacing and a structure capable of sustaining attention beyond the original premise. The involvement of a credited screenwriter and a studio adaptation is therefore important. It signals an effort to translate a striking online creation into a longer-form narrative rather than simply reproduce a viral image.
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and Barker’s Obsession helped make the broader conversation especially visible this summer. The headline-grabbing reaction has been that studios may search Reddit threads and low-budget YouTube channels for the next breakout creator. The more grounded takeaway is that the industry is responding to creators who have already demonstrated a command of atmosphere, visual language and audience attention in places where horror fandom actually congregates.
That is not a guarantee every online myth will become a film or series. It does mean that an illustrator, video maker or creator with a distinct point of view may have a more direct route into development than in earlier eras. The creator is not just supplying raw material; their understanding of why the material unsettles people can be part of the appeal.
Filmmakers become the recognizable names
Michael Bitar’s central assessment is that horror is moving from being purely concept-led toward a model in which filmmakers themselves become stars. That should not be mistaken for a claim that cast no longer matters. It is better understood as a change in how buyers and audiences identify a project before it exists.
In a concept-driven project, the immediate sell is the premise: a recognizable villain, a high-stakes scenario, a peculiar world or an instantly understandable scare. In a star-driven project, a performer’s involvement is a major part of the attraction. The emerging third piece is the filmmaker’s brand: a director or creative partnership can signal a particular sensibility, whether that means elaborate set pieces, a specific visual approach, a trusted handling of franchise continuity or an ability to build a world from unconventional material.
Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein offer a prominent example. The pair co-directed 2025’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, a New Line revival reported to have cost $50 million and to have taken in almost $320 million worldwide. Verve has since arranged 12 development projects for the duo, including Gremlins 3 at Warner Bros. and Metal Gear Solid at Sony. They also have a first-look agreement at Sony.
A first-look deal generally gives a company the first opportunity to consider projects from a creator before those projects are offered elsewhere. It is not the same as an automatic greenlight. Its practical significance is access and priority: the company has a preferred relationship with the creative team, while the team has a defined potential home for new work.
The Metal Gear Solid project is particularly notable for game audiences because it places filmmakers associated with a major horror revival alongside a property rooted in video games. Nothing in the reported deal establishes what form that project will take, its timetable or its creative details. Still, the attachment shows how a successful genre track record can travel beyond horror. That supports Verve’s broader argument that its clients should be viewed as multi-hyphenate storytellers rather than confined to one commercial lane.
For more on game projects attracting attention on the screen and in development, Joking Joystick has also covered Fable’s newly shown gameplay and its combat focus.
Franchises, audience trust and career reinvention
Horror’s commercial ecosystem is also creating new opportunities for performers and writers associated with the genre. Agent Josh Rahm has helped Matthew Lillard, known to many viewers from Scream, chart a new path through the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise and Amazon’s rebooted Carrie series from Mike Flanagan.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s connection is a reminder that gaming fandom is not a side issue in this landscape. A game adaptation brings an audience that often knows the characters, theories and internal mythology in exceptional detail. For performers, that can mean entering a franchise with a ready-made community—but also with more scrutiny around how faithfully the screen version serves what players care about.
Screenwriter Guy Busick likewise has credits on Scream 7, identified as the highest-earning entry in that franchise, and Searchlight’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Together, those projects demonstrate the value of writers who can work within an established franchise while maintaining a coherent genre voice. Franchise continuation is not just a sequel exercise; it requires managing audience expectations, recognizable elements and the need for a reason to return.
These cases complicate the simplistic idea that horror is a low-budget proving ground with limited career upside. The source material points to directors receiving broad development slates, writers moving across major properties and performers finding fresh leverage through new genre franchises. The talent can be as transferable as the IP—provided the creative work earns enough trust.
Why short stories are part of the pipeline
Producer Scott Glassgold’s 12:01 Films represents a complementary approach. The company focuses on creator content and has become active in the market for short stories suited to film and television adaptation. Glassgold also has a specialty imprint at Simon & Schuster, adding publishing to the company’s pipeline.
A pipeline in this context is the route by which a story or creator moves from one stage of development to another. Publishing can help identify concise concepts and establish material before a screen adaptation is pursued. For horror in particular, short fiction can be an efficient way to test an idea’s hook, voice and emotional payoff without demanding the scale of a full novel or feature screenplay at the outset.
That does not mean every short story is a plug-and-play movie pitch. As with digital horror, a compact piece may need substantial expansion to become a satisfying feature or series. But the model gives producers and studios a clearer place to discover work, while giving writers another avenue through which their stories can attract adaptation interest.
The practical takeaway for audiences
The surge of attention around horror should not be read as an instruction to expect every creepy online phenomenon to receive a studio version. Nor do reported attachments guarantee that a project will move quickly, or at all. Development is a stage of work, not a release promise.
What the current dealmaking does show is a more interconnected genre economy. Legacy film franchises, game-connected properties, online-born creations, publishing and creator-led production are increasingly feeding one another. The practical result for audiences is that names behind the camera may become more useful signals when evaluating an upcoming project—alongside the franchise name, cast and studio.
Verve’s strategy is to cultivate those names early and keep working with them as their opportunities expand. In a horror market that often sells the creature, the curse or the premise first, that may be the longer-term bet: the creator who knows how to make audiences look twice at the dark corner of the screen.
