A Grab Bag of Horror News, 1 to 7 Jun 2025

A selection of things that caught our attention in the world of horror this week

Bite-Sized Horror News

Vale

Condolences to family, friends, and fans of Lionsgate executive, Jason Constantine. Constantine championed the Saw franchise, pushing the studio to buy it after watching a concept short. Other horror movies he was also involved with include Cabin in the Woods, Cabin Fever, and Rob Zombie’s Rejects RIP.

Horror Book Bits

Grady Hendrix’s horror/thriller short story, The Blanks, is getting a Netflix movie adaptation. The story was released in April 2025 as part of the Amazon Originals Shivers collection.
Joe Abercrombie’s latest novel The Devils is getting a James Cameron movie adaptation.
Mariana Enríquez’s psychological horror short story My Sad Dead is getting a 4-part miniseries.

Horror Movie Morsels

Documentary The Farmer & the Shark launches at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on 19 Aug 2025 and is about Craig Kingsbury, a local Martha’s Vineyard legend, and the influence he had on the Jaws
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the sequel to 2019’s Ready or Not, will be in cinemas in April 2026.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence, the 5th movie in the murderous fruit franchise, is in the works and aiming for a limited cinema run around Halloween.
Rumor is that Blumhouse is buying the rights to Twisted Pictures’ part of the Saw franchise.
Revenge horror movie Ma is getting a Blumhouse sequel.
A bunch of studios and streamers are vying for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre IP, which includes movie, TV, games, and live events.
Black Angel Tapes is a creepy new website with connections to Bring Her Back and Talk to Me.
A couple of weeks ago, Guillermo del Toro said his Frankenstein adaptation is “emotional but not a horror movie”, but that hasn’t stopped it from being rated ‘R’ for bloody violence and grisly images.
Mike Flanagan told a fan on Tumblr that there’s no way his new Exorcist movie will be coming out in Mar 2026 because “we need to finish CARRIE first”.
Mattel’s Monster High doll line is getting a live-action movie adaptation.
While Cillian Murphy is not in upcoming zombie movie 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle says he will be in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
It appears that Ridley Scott won’t be directing any more Alien movies.

Horror TV Treats

Mike Flanagan assures us that his series adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is moving forward but “the thing is so big, it’s like building an oil tanker”.

Horror Game Goodies

Investigation/survival horror game Phasmophobia is getting a Blumhouse movie adaptation.

Horror Festival Fare

The 29th Fantasia International Film Festival is starting a day earlier than originally advised, so it’s now happening from 16 Jul to 3 Aug 2025 in Montreal, Quebec. The second wave of movies announced includes South Korean supernatural horror movie Noise, Australian supernatural horror movie The Serpent’s Skin, and Japanese psychological horror movie New Group.
Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights has added a new Fallout haunted house.

“I guess that's what I love about books – they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time...”
Libba Bray

Writing Horror

Applications are open for Gabino Iglesias’s Novel in a Year: Speculative Fiction online class run by StoryStudio Chicago. The course runs for 11 months from 12 Aug 2025, is limited to 12 students, and acceptance will be submission-based.

Some places accepting submissions

It Was Paradise anthology (Reckoning Press)
Pays: 15 cents per word for prose, $75 per page for poetry and art
Theme: War and conflict as viewed through the lens of environmental justice
Submissions close: 22 Jun 2025

Upcoming submission calls

The 13th Floor novellas (Dark Holme Publishing)
Pays: £100
Looking for: Psychological, supernatural, speculative, or cosmic horror with emotional or philosophical undercurrents with the thirteenth floor central to the story’s structure and horror
Submissions open 15 Jun and close 31 Aug 2025

The Orange & Bee
Pays: 8 cents per word short fiction/non-fiction, $80 flash fiction/non-fiction, $50 poem
Looking for: Stories that engage in a significant way with the long history of fairy tales
Submissions open 1 Jul and close 14 Jul 2025

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”
Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Trailer Horror

A taste of things to come.

Horror TV Trailers

Alien: Earth. Sci-fi horror. When a space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat. Hulu, 12 Aug 2025

Dexter: Resurrection. Serial killer horror. Weeks after Dexter is shot by his own son, he awakens from a coma to find Harrison gone. Realizing the weight of what he put his son through, Dexter sets out for New York City, determined to find him and make things right. Paramount+, 11 Jul 2025

Nyaight of the Living Cat. Japanese animated cat horror. A virus which turns anyone who touches a cat into a cat has spread into a worldwide nyandemic. Crunchyroll, 6 Jul 2025

Squid Game, Season 3. Psychological horror. Gi-hun, a.k.a. Player 456, is forced to make some important choices in the face of overwhelming despair as he and the surviving players are thrust into deadlier games that test everyone’s resolve. Netflix, 27 Jun 2025

The Summer Hikaru Died, trailer 2. Anime horror. Yoshiki’s life is thrown upside down when his best friend Hikaru is replaced by ‘something’ that looks and acts just like him. Netflix, 5 Jul 2025

Horror Movie Trailers

Black Phone 2. Supernatural horror. As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, his sister begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp. Cinema, 17 Oct 2025

The Dogs. Supernatural horror. After fleeing his psychotic father, a young teen and his mom seek refuge in a remote farmhouse, only to face a pack of ferocious dogs and the sinister spirits that haunt the property. VOD, 13 Jun 2025

Dracula. Vampire horror. After his wife dies, a 15th century prince renounces God and becomes a vampire. Centuries later in 19th century London, he sees a woman resembling his late wife and pursues her, sealing his own fate. US release date TBA

Frankenstein. Frankenstein horror. Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of the classic tale. Netflix, Nov 2025

Ick. Comedy horror. A mysterious alien substance slowly takes root until one day it attacks. A high-school science teacher chooses to save the life of a student he suspects may be his daughter. Limited release

M3GAN 2.0, final trailer. Doll horror. Two years after M3GAN’s rampage, her creator, Gemma, resurrects her to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defense contractor who stole M3GAN’s underlying tech. Cinema, 27 Jun 2025

The Man in My Basement. Psychological horror. Down on his luck, Charles agrees to rent his basement to a stranger, unaware he may be letting in a force much darker than he imagined. Release date TBA

The Woods. Survival horror. During an interview on a popular true crime podcast, the lone survivor of a tragic camping trip tells the story of a hike that resulted in the death of her best friends several years earlier. VOD, 27 Jun 2025

Zombies of the Third Reich. Zombie horror. A special team of allied forces is sent to infiltrate a Nazi-occupied bunker. When they arrive, they discover the scientific experiments that have been taking place there have turned everyone into super human, flesh eating zombies. VOD, 10 Jun 2025

Horror Game Trailers

Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement. Monster horror. Explore a castle crawling with massive monsters and bloodthirsty beasts. PS5, 2026

The Bornless. Lovecraftian horror. Face off against other players, summon demons, and build factions in a Lovecraftian world. Release date TBA

Ghost of Yotei. Revenge horror. A haunted, lone mercenary, thirsty for revenge, travels through northern Japan, hunting those who killed her family many years earlier. PS5, 2 Oct 2025

“Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”
Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl

A Selection of Horror Books Released this Week

10 horror books this week. Themes: Supernatural, psychological, dystopian, liminal, and horror movie horror

See: A Selection of Horror Books Released, 1 to 7 Jun 2025

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.”
Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

A Selection of Horror Movies Released this Week

9 horror movies this week. Themes: Supernatural, psychological, vampire, zombie, comedy, and shark horror

See: A Selection of Horror Movies Released, 1 to 7 Jun 2025

“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
Richard Powers, The Overstory

What We Were Thinking About this Week

Swim into 13 Lake Horror Book Recommendations

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig (novel)

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz (novel)

Bankruptcies of Unbound and Albert Whitman & Co Put Authors Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Victoria Strauss (Writer Beware)

This week’s horror book recommendations

Theme: Train horror

The Platform Edge by British Library Publishing
“…there was something wrong about Number 651 even before she was finished building.”

Hell Train by Iain Rob Wright
“Pay attention to the tunnel up ahead. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a work of art.”

Vampire on the Orient Express by Shane Carrow
“Deep within those carriages, hidden away in the darkness, something ancient stirred.”

Ghost Train by Stephen Laws
“He had hoped beyond hope that it would not happen again. But it had happened again.”

Ghost Train of Treblinka by Hubert L. Mullins
“The Entity hadn’t been awake for long, but the old ways returned to him rather quickly.”

The Light at the End by John Skipp and Craig Spector
“When all the lights went out, Peggy Lewin was alone in the third car.”

Hell Train: All Aboard by Kal Spriggs
“The possessed didn’t move out of the way as two thousand, nine hundred and fifty tons of steel rolled into them.”

“His hands were weak and shaking from carrying far too many books from the bookshop. It was the best feeling.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1

And Now For Something Completely Different

Cyanide & Happiness on Instagram

Horror-Themed Shopping

See the FearSome Fiction shop for horror designs available on a wide variety of T-shirts, tanks, sweatshirts, and hoodies, as well as bags, notebooks, phone cases, pillows, duvets, blankets, bath mats, and more.