The horror franchise playbook: how to keep monsters paying out
The horror, the horror ...
2025 is shaping up as a breakout year for horror. While other genres wrestle with expensive flops and hesitant audiences, horror has delivered steady growth in both volume and margin. The genre now accounts for nearly one in five tickets sold in North America, with global box office already past $2 billion and more titles still to come. What matters most is not just the scale, but the shape of this growth. Horror has become the cleanest example of how to operate IP as a franchise economy: modest costs, repeatable extensions, and audiences that keep coming back for the next instalment.
More horror titles, and more Box Office
While the growth in the chart above is skewed by the post-COVID and strike impacts of 2020-23, it’s fair to say that the number of horror releases is booming.
And with it, the Box Office. So far in 2025, the global Box Office from horror titles that received wide releases in the US (>1,000 theatres) has surpassed $2 billion, with more key titles still to launch before the year is out.
The Horror Franchise Playbook: How to keep the scares paying out
Horror still welcomes experiments from first-time directors, but the genre’s profitability engine is driven by producers who treat horror as renewable IP. That means planning universes, feeding extensions, and monetising the scares across formats. By planning routes into games, live events, and collectables, they are building non-seasonal revenue and longer-sustaining brands.
“I have to say the media landscape is generally quite bleak, but horror is a very bright spot in that rather bleak landscape. People seem to love going to horror movies in groups.” - Jason Blum (Source: Den of Geek, 2024)
2025 has seen many of the key trends in this genre play out at scale:
The Conjuring: Last Rites showed the power of a successful franchise to drive ticket sales, achieving the biggest worldwide horror movie opening of all time, with a $194 million debut that surpassed the previous record holder, 2017’s It.
Weapons ($265 million worldwide Box Office) and Sinners ($367 million) showed the strength of original IP, fresh approaches and auteur directors (plus the benefit of a Warner Bros. marketing team on one of the all-time marketing hot streaks).
Terrifier 3 ($90 million worldwide Box Office - on a $2 million budget) proved the potential profitability upside that can be achieved when a micro-budget title breaks out.
Success factors for building durable horror IP
1. Owning the IP in the first place.
A lot of classic horror IP is changing hands at the moment. A24 is said to be closing in on the rights to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Blumhouse bought the rights to Saw this Summer. Miramax scored the TV rights to the Halloween franchise back in 2023 (though momentum on this seems to be stalling).
2. Remakes and reimaginings
Horror has always been comfortable raiding its past. The Amityville Horror is being reimagined at Amazon MGM. Nosferatu returned through Robert Eggers with arthouse prestige. The benefits are obvious: familiar IP with a baked-in hook. The challenge is avoiding creative bankruptcy. Poorly judged retreads remind us that legacy brands can just as easily be devalued. The Strangers: Chapter 2 just opened to $5.9 million, a steep drop from its predecessor’s $11.9 million opening:
“Lionsgate got lucky once with Renny Harlin’s half-assed, embarrassing remake of the 2008 chiller, which earned $48 million globally last year on a $9 million budget. [Chapter 2 performance] is a mix between ‘folks were only curious the first time’ and ‘You get what you f***ing deserve’ … Lionsgate should be making the *first* The Strangers, not a nostalgia-chasing, franchise-hungry remake of it.” - Scott Mendelson , The Outside Scoop
A quick side-note on the most prolific horror franchise. What do you think it is? Dracula? Saw? Nope, it’s the aforementioned Amityville Horror. 60 films and counting! And each one has been reviewed by Bloody Disgusting’s critic Joe Lipsett in an effort of Herculean masochism. If you want to know the legal court history behind the Amityville brand becoming a free-for-all horror franchise that anyone can take a crack at, check out this podcast episode from MUBI, hosted by Anna Bogutskaya (who, side-note to the side-note, wrote a terrific book on modern horror, called Feeding the Monster, which I highly recommend).
Meanwhile, the Univeral classics are continually reinvented, with varying results. 2017’s attempt to kickstart a connected ‘Dark Universe’ with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy was dead on arrival. Subsequent attempts have been a mixed bag - for every Invisible Man ($144 million Box Office on a $7 million budget), there is a Wolf Man ($35 million Box Office on a $25 million budget). We will soon see how successfully Guillermo del Toro has re-imagined the Frankenstein story. And next year sees Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on the Bride of Frankenstein, The Bride! Meanwhile, the theme park incarnation of Dark Universe, which is part of Universal’s Epic Universe, is keeping the monsters alive.
3. Worldbuilding that multiplies.
The Conjuring cycle showed how to build a universe from small parts. Objects, case files, side characters - a doll, a nun, a painting. Each detail can become a future film, a piece of merch, or a haunted house. Map your IP and inventory your artifacts, timelines, locations, and supporting players.
4. A cost structure that survives misses.
Repeatable, modest budgets keep risk tolerable and margins healthy. When a mid-tier sequel underperforms, the brand can absorb it. When one catches, the upside is outsized. Blumhouse has institutionalised this discipline.
5. Platforms that welcome horror.
Horror jumps formats with less friction than most IP. Games, seasonal live events, and series adapt the core pleasure loop: suspense and release. Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights has grown into a reliable cash engine, with eight-figure annual production spends and record-setting seasons.
6. Cultural oxygen.
Prestige players like A24 cultivate an audience that treats horror as conversation, rather than a guilty pleasure. That keeps critics engaged and creators ambitious, which in turn lengthens the life of the brands that come through the ‘arthouse’ door and move into mainstream channels. When Hugh Grant was promoting Heretic, he said:
“I am so thirsty for new stuff, stuff that’s interesting and mould-breaking. I’m such an admirer of the way some of these new horror films, particularly the ones financed by A24, have brought real, fresh filmmaking back. Incredible originality, weirdness, and fucked-up-ness. It’s such a great antidote to the way cinema has been going for the last ten years - more and more formulaic, gigantic. These are bringing people back, people are actually interested in stories about human beings and originality.” - Hugh Grant (source: Total Film)
7. The rise of auteur horror.
In horror, sometimes the brand is not the IP, but the director. Studios are investing in strong, filmmaker-driven horror, evident in the success of directors like Jordan Peele (Get Out), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Ari Aster (Hereditary), and Robert Eggers (Nosferatu), whose distinct visions are attracting critical acclaim and audiences. Osgood Perkins has followed up last year’s Longlegs with not one but two movies this year: Stephen King adaptation The Monkey ($69 million on a $10.5 million budget) and Keeper, which releases on November 14th and is marketed as “A dark trip from Osgood Perkins”.
8. Fallow years, followed by a ‘Legacy’ return.
By the time the Final Destination series reached its 5th instalment in 2011, it may have still been posting decent Box Office numbers, but it was losing momentum creatively. A 14 year gap until this year’s release of Final Destination: Bloodlines did the world of good, providing a chance for nostalgia to grow in its original fanbase, and for new fans to discover the brand on streaming. Bloodlines made $314 million at the Box Office on a $50 million budget. Of course, the caveat I often use in this newsletter still applies: you do still need to make a good film. If all it took was resting a franchise for a decade or two and then bringing it back in a nostalgia play, then this year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel would have taken more than $64 million worldwide at the Box Office (this, having already failed as an Amazon streaming reboot in 2021, cancelled after one season).
9. New talent pipelines from YouTube
A new generation of filmmakers is emerging directly from YouTube. Danny and Michael Philippou (RackaRacka) directed A24’s smash hit Talk to Me after honing their craft online. Curry Barker landed a feature deal after his YouTube film Milk & Serial, made for $800, went viral, and 19-year-old Kane Parsons is adapting his YouTube series The Backrooms into an A24 feature. Studios now actively scout the platform for ‘untapped talent’.
10. Streaming series and anthologies.
Use TV to explore lore and side characters. Current and forthcoming TV series include:
Alien: Earth, performing well on Disney+.
Crystal Lake - the Friday the 13th prequel is currently in production for Peacock.
Carrie - being adapted by Mike
Flanagan for Amazon.The prequel It: Welcome to Derry premieres on HBO Max on October 26th.
11. Games and interactive.
The path between horror gaming and movies is improving. Five Nights at Freddy’s showed how film can extract value from game fandom, and the sequel has been positioned to lean harder into what fans asked for.
12. Live experiences.
Parks, pop-ups, touring haunts, museum-style exhibits can all atttract a horror audience. Halloween Horror Nights’ record-setting season suggests that higher ARPUs are achievable when the IP mix is fresh and the design is premium. 
13. Merchandise and collectables.
Character-led categories outperform title-led ones. Structure SKUs so that evergreen lines survive between film beats; limited drops cash-in on trailer and premiere spikes; entry-price mass items drive reach and engagement.
14. Publishing and audio.
Novellas, graphic one-shots, audiobooks, and podcasts can all serve as:
i) Discovery on-ramps for new fans
ii) Inexpensive development spaces for testing villains, symbols, and rules. Ruthlessly retire what does not stick. Push what does into higher-budget channels. Archive 81, for example, began life as an (award-winning) podcast, before being adapted into a Lovecraftian streaming show by Netflix (87% on Rotten Tomatoes, though it sadly only lasted one season. It gets bonus points in my book for having Martin Donovan in the trailer).
iii) A means of engaging fans and sustaining a brand between tentpole releases. These formats allow you to fill in the margins with side arcs, origin backstory, and peripheral characters. They build emotional investment in the world between major releases. The Alien franchise, for example, has a robust slate of audiobooks, including original stories and exclusive-to-Audible full-cast recordings.
15. Cadence planning
One theatrical anchor. One series beat. One event activation. One licensed collab that creates cultural noise. Four merch drops, timed to trailer, premiere, Halloween, and holiday gifting. The goal is rhythm without fatigue. And beware Halloween dependency - Q4 is a gift, but also a trap. Without off-season activations, consumer product lines can wither by January. Build Spring moments on platforms that horror already owns, from game updates to touring pop-ups.
16. Audience development
Use social channels as a franchise lab and treat engagement as R&D. Seed micro-shorts that try a scare mechanic, a mask silhouette, a sound. The pipeline that elevated Talk To Me from online notoriety to a major A24 performer is instructive. Track data and audience signals that predict renewability: fan-made assets, cosplay adoption, and memes that stick around.
Risks
Tonal shifts
It’s a fine line between keeping sequels fresh and departing too far from the original. Expectations were high when M3GAN 2.0 released this year, but the evolution of the property proved a step too far for audiences:
“We all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. We kind of classically overthought how powerful people’s engagement was really with her.” - Jason Blum, on The Town podcast
We will see how audiences respond to another gear change with M3GAN spin-off SOULM8TE, which is described as an ‘erotic thriller’(!) and releases in January 2026.
Overpaying for IP
The cautionary tale here is The Exorcist: Universal and Peacock, in partnership with Blumhouse and Morgan Creek, acquired the rights to the Exorcist franchise in July 2021 for a reported $400 million, intending to create a new trilogy of films. The first attempt, The Exorcist: Believer, made $137 million on a $30 million budget, which may not sound too bad, but the critical reception was dire (22% on Rotten Tomatoes). Plans for a trilogy have been abandoned, and Mike Flanagan (him again) was reported to be writing, directing and producing ‘a radical new take’. The lesson here: although IP counts for a lot, it can’t be at any price.
Over-committing to too many movies
The Strangers reboot was announced as a trilogy and shot back-to-back. As we saw above, Chapter 2 has underperformed. The budgets were sufficiently low that they may turn a profit, but the whole exercise smacks of hubris.
The 20 Days Later reboot was pitched as a trilogy. The first two installments, 28 Years Later (directed by original director Danny Boyle) and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (directed by Nia DaCosta), were shot back-to-back. 28 Years Later made $151 million at the worldwide Box office on a budget of $60 million. My concern is that The Bone Temple will underperform and the concluding chapter, which has not yet been greenlit, will be put in doubt.
Key takeaways for other genres
Horror’s current success offers valuable lessons for franchises in any genre, particularly those facing creative stagnation or audience fatigue.
Back auteur vision. Creative control in the right hands generates both culture and margin.
Tier budgets. Not every entry needs to be a $200m tentpole; flexible budgets unlock creativity and spread risk.
Scout new pipelines. Platforms like YouTube and TikTok are R&D labs for the next generation of directors.
Build across formats. Treat IP as a world to explore through film, TV, games, and experiences, not a single linear story.
Pause and reset strategically. Rest franchises when fatigue sets in, then return with original voices and renewed purpose.
The outlook
Horror has become a fertile testing ground for the IP operating system. Theatrical anchors prove the brand. Streaming and events expand it. Merch and games monetise it. Fans supply free R&D through their memes, costumes, and TikToks.
We still need more original IP to break through and create the franchises of tomorrow (Weapons and Sinners were huge, but those two were the only originals that broke through, really). But Horror will keep earning as long as IP owners keep feeding curiosity instead of blunt repetition.
To those who celebrate, when it comes, Happy Halloween!
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