Everything We Learned at Blumfest During New York Comic Con
The horror community ate well in the New York Comic Con building—not that we had any doubt. You can commonly find the horror hive packed inside the annual Blumfest panel, where founder/CEO Jason Blum lets all the details loose of what fans can expect. 2025 is set to be Blumhouse’s biggest, with ten films set to release, almost double the amount of any year prior.
Here’s what we know so far.
Night Swim was the first entry out of the Atomic Monster/Blumhouse merger, but there’s more coming up. Besides The Monkey from Osgood Perkins, we can also expect Mortal Kombat 2, The Conjuring 4, and a new thriller out of Apple TV+, The Lost Bus, starring Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar, The Gentlemen) and America Ferrera (Barbie, Ugly Betty). The film will be co-produced by our very own Jamie Lee-Curtis, with the scream queen spearheading the project.
Leigh Whannell arrived with the premiere of the first trailer for Wolf Man, and a January 17, 2025 release date loaded in the chamber. By the sounds of the audience, the newest version of the classic monster is a hot topic.
We spoke with Whannell after the panel to talk more about where this particular wolf fits into the werewolf sub-genre.
He said:
“I had an image in my head of what would be different about mine. I knew that if I kept it grounded, and took more of a diseased body horror approach, that might be different. So, I really decided to lean into the body horror with this one; full Cronenberg”.
We heard last year’s announcement on Blumhouse Games, and starting October 22, we’ll finally be able to start downloading. Fear The Spotlight is a third-person retro-horror that relies on puzzle-solving and stealth for survival. The game was developed by Cozy Game Pals. Blum promised, “The way that you can describe our games is the same way you can describe our movies… It’s the same DNA.” And he might be right; the trailer looks promising!
Next were the answers to questions we’ve been asking for what feels like ages. Blumhouse has kept Christopher Landon’s (Happy Death Day, Freaky) Drop under a tight watch. An exclusive first look at Meghann Fahy’s (The White Lotus) first step into the genre was shown, expected on April 11, 2025. If you own an iPhone, I’d turn off your AirDrop settings until then.
Landon teased “This is my love letter to De Palma” in a tweet back in February. So naturally we had to follow up after the panel to bring the take-home assignment to the class. We asked him for a De Palma watchlist to get us ready for the film’s release, and he delivered.
He told us, “I always start with Carrie, because I have to. It’s still one of my full-on movie obsessions. Dressed To Kill, too. Michael Caine in drag gives me nightmares.”
Fans also got an exclusive first look at The Woman in the Yard from Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, House of Wax). Like Drop, the screened trailer hasn’t reached the main feed yet, but what I can say is that whoever that woman in Danielle Deadwyler’s (I Saw The TV Glow, Till) is definitely a problem. We’ll find out how much of a problem closer to the March 28 drop date.
On the deeper end of announcements, longtime friend of the production company Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Hush) popped out to lightly discuss the projects that haven’t started production, like The Black Phone 2 coming October 27, 2025, and Flanagan’s own untitled shot at The Exorcist legacy.
Flanagan spoke about why he jumped at the property as David Gordon-Green exited the Blumhouse plans:
“That movie was very formative for me. It very much was the scariest movie ever made at the time. I saw an opportunity to make the scariest movie I’ve ever made, and I just couldn’t resist it. Now I can say to my childhood self ‘I got to make the sequel to The Exorcist and to The Shining, and to Ouija.”
Straight from set, came Allison Williams (M3GAN, Get Out) to the New York Comic Con stage to (understandably) give us as few details as possible on M3GAN 2.0. Both Williams and Violet McGraw will return for the sequel, set to release on June 27, 2025. Filming concluded only days ago, so no footage was shown, but fans did get a special pre-recorded message from M3GAN, who was too busy “slaying on set” to make it to New York Comic Con.
Plot details are still under wraps, but we can expect the sequel to be more explosive than the first, with even more focus on practical fx and violence. Williams jokingly voiced her concern for audiences, stating, “No one will believe this is practical”, which we all know, is amazing news.
Oh, the last bit of information announced, of course, was the first official poster for a little hidden picture called Five Nights At Freddy’s 2, coming December 5, 2024!
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