In preparing for the event, I spent time digging into what’s happening in the genre - how it’s evolving, what’s working, and where things might go next.

Horror has always changed shape to match the times, but right now the pace of that change feels faster than usual.

The Horror Movie Report. Get under the skin of over 27,000 horror movies with the most detailed data-led insights ever compiled for both horror fans and industry professionals alike. Grab a copy at HorrorMovieReport.com

It’s an exciting time to be having these conversations. Horror films have already cleared $1 billion at the US box office this year and is currently sitting at a 17% marketshare, making it the third most popular genre on the big screen.

Below are seven trends and three questions that came out of my preparation for the event.

1. Studios have their franchises…

At the top, studios are building out interconnected universes and sequels that behave more like long-running TV shows than individual films. The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination: Bloodlines and 28 Years Later each drew huge audiences this year, helped by familiar names and clear promises of what they deliver.

These films look like the kind of stable assets studio covet, being as they are (relatively) low risk, high return, and very marketable.

2. …and directors have their followers

At the same time, the biggest energy in horror is coming from directors rather than brands. Sinners didn’t need an existing franchise to pass $360 million worldwide. It sold itself on Ryan Coogler’s name and the promise of seeing what the director of Black Panther would do with vampires. The same applies to Zach Cregger’s Weapons and Osgood Perkins’s The Monkey. In horror right now, the filmmaker is often the franchise.

I love how both sides feed each other. The confidence that studios have in sequels gives directors room to take bigger creative swings elsewhere. And when those swings connect, they create new IP that studios can build on later. That loop between commercial reliability and creative originality is proving a real boon for the horror genre.

3. Horror is getting the respect it deserves

For a long time, horror was treated as a guilty (or even shameful) pleasure, something audiences loved but critics dismissed. But that perception is changing fast.

Many of the highest-grossing horror films of the past year also earned strong reviews and awards attention. Sinners was a mega box office hit with 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, Longlegs was one of the most-discussed releases of last year, and A Quiet Place: Day One was praised for its emotional weight.

Horror has always fed on the zeitgeist of fears, but what’s new is that the critical classes seem to be appreciating it. A number of recent films have received positive critical coverage for reflecting modern fears of loneliness, identity, surveillance, and control. The Woman in the Yard told a tale of grief and suicidal thoughts through a supernatural lens, while Bring Her Back used haunting as a metaphor for guilt and exploitation.

What’s most interesting to me is that this new respect hasn’t come at the cost of the genre’s edginess. The films remain unsettling and confrontational, just with sharper ideas behind the scares. Right now, horror is leading the way in showing how a genre can balance art and commerce without compromising either.

4. Body horror has returned (and it’s transformed)

Body horror has been pretty much dormant since the 1980s but now it’s back with a vengeance, and in an evolved form. The first big wave of such movies from Cronenberg, Carpenter, and their copycats were about transgression, whereas the modern crop are taking the nature of control (or the lack thereof).

The Substance and Together took the old language of mutation and use it to talk about how people are shaped by pressure, expectation, and power. The fear isn’t really about what happens to the body, but instead who owns it. And while modern SFX and VFX allow for even more extreme imagery, the movie’s true focus has shifted inward, seeking to turn shock into empathy

5. Bold ideas still cut though

Despite the commercialisation and critical acclaim horror is still a genre which rewards big, bold ideas on over budget.

Good Boy builds an entire film from a dog’s perspective. In a Violent Nature shows the a slasher’s quiet routine, Late Night with the Devil confines itself to a single 1970s talk-show broadcast that unravels live on air, while Vincent Must Die starts with one unexplained rule (i.e. everyone suddenly wants to kill one man) and sticks to it without explanation.

These films fully commit to their concept and so in a landscape full of sequels and shared universes, these pared-down ideas stand out precisely because they’re self-contained, disciplined, and memorable.

6. Horror’s biggest scares are happening everywhere

Horror is spreading beyond its traditional silos, both in timing (with releases throughout the year) and invading the very biggest screens. Sinners opened in IMAX and The Conjuring: Last Rites played in 4DX.

The way horror reaches audiences is changing just as fast as the stories themselves. Studio marketing has borrowed tactics from online fandom, using cryptic trailers, hotline numbers, and scavenger-hunt clues to build mystery. Longlegs proved how far that can go, with its campaign generating weeks of conversation before anyone even saw the film. Once the films open, short theatrical windows push them quickly to home release, keeping momentum alive for streaming platforms and digital sales.

This all adds up to making horror feel omnipresent. It’s in cinemas, on TikTok, and in game adaptations that blur the line between movie and experience.

7. Horror’s mixing with everything

We’re increasing seeing horror used as a tool inside other genres.

Sinners is part gothic drama, part action movie, and part musical. The Gorge adds combat choreography to its creature feature, while Death of a Unicorn turns absurdist comedy into unease.

This blending works both ways, with Get Out being political, Barbarian being funny, and A Quiet Place being about family. Horror is a flexible language that can express almost anything (fear, grief, anger, absurdity, etyc) and still find an audience.

Three questions for the genre

To end, here are three questions I’m keen to see answered over time.

Q1. Will audiences ever care about AI horror?

Horror movies centered on stories feature Artificial Intelligence arrived quickly, but audiences seem unsure what they want from it. M3GAN 2.0 and AFRAID both underperformed, suggesting the novelty has worn off.

That doesn’t mean the idea is finished, it’s just that it’s waiting for a defining film, the kind that reshapes expectations the way The Blair Witch Project did for found footage or 28 Days Later did for pandemic stories.

Q2. Will horror be a permanent feature on IMAX?

As horror expands into premium formats and massive screens, will it stay there? Films like Sinners and The Conjuring: Last Rites proved that horror can fill IMAX theatres, but it’s unclear if that’s the new normal or just a temporary peak.

Horror works best when it feels close and personal, and that intimacy can be lost on a sixty-foot screen.

Q3. Will horror festivals become the new Cannes or Sundance?

Horror festivals have been growing in number and influence, with places like Fantastic Fest and FrightFest shaping early buzz for new voices. As horror becomes more central to cinema, these festivals could become its equivalent of Cannes or Sundance.

If horror continues to evolve as it has this year, it may stop being treated as a subset of film altogether and instead as one of the pillars that define what modern cinema looks like.

The Horror Movie Report

If you want to dig deeper into the horror genres, then grab a copy of my Horror Movie Report

It’s a massive collection of research, statistics, and spreadsheets. It’s packed with insights on everything from horror’s financials to its evolving subgenres.

Read more at HorrorMovieReport.com

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Horror has a relatively low percentage of the youngest audience segment (just 15.8% are under 18) while also having the lowest percentage of the oldest audience segment (11.8% are over 45 years old).

The lack of children and teenagers in the audience is understandable, given the high chance of the movies containing objectionable material (see Section Eight) and being an unlikely pick for parents organising family trips to the cinema.

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Don’t worry, my personal life is fine, I mean that I have been crunching every imaginable data point related to the production and consumption of horror movies.

The end result is the Horror Movie Report - an epic study of all 27,000+ horror films ever made through the lens of data, covering …

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Despite not being much of a watcher of horror movies, the business side fascinates me. The genre seems to break many of the rules of thumb which apply to other genres and deserves its own economic study.

For example, The Black Phone is currently doing great business in theatres, on a modest $18 million budget. I was asked on Twitter if this is another illustration of the idea that "the less you spend, the more you make" with horror movies.

I went back to my past (pre-pandemic) data to see what we can learn from my existing calculations.

Profit prophets

In a previous project, I studied all movies reaching US cinemas between 2000 and 2018 and built a model for how likely each project was to have achieved profitability (i.e. money back to producers after all costs and all income along the whole value chain, assuming standard terms).

By splitting the films into one of seven budget categories, we can see how the estimated profitability shifts.

As the chart below reveals, there seems to be a sweet spot between around $5 million and $20 million, in which profitability is at its highest. At that range, two-thirds are likely to have been profitable for their producers.

This is just looking at profit/loss in a binary sense. On top of this, we need to consider the likelihood of mega profits. The Black Phone has already grossed over seven times its budget at the global box office (for scale, twice its budget has historically been an extremely rough marker of profitability).

The economics of a micro-budget (i.e. under $1 million) and big-budget (i.e. over $50m) horror films are vastly different - almost to the point of being different sub-industries. The former is more likely to lose everything, but also more likely to make spectacular returns, as a percentage of the initial investment. Big budget movies are safer on the low end but have their 'best case scenario' capped at more moddest levels.

Perhaps the mid-range horror movie have it best, in that they are likely to receive some income, even if underperforming, but also carry the promise of a high percentage return.

Further reading

If you would like to explore some of the ideas mentioned above, I have included a few of my past studies below:

• How profitable are horror movies?

• What percentage of independent films are profitable?

• What the data says about producing low-budget horror films

• Six things every filmmaker should know about the horror genre

• Is Jason Blum right that there is a shortage of female horror directors?

• The handful of tropes used by most horror movie posters

• What types of horror films do television broadcasters want?

Notes

Today's research related to all horror films with a Domestic theatrical release between 2000 and 2018, for which budget data was available. This include both indie movies and Studio productions. You can read more about my methodology for this research here.

It relates to a pre-pandemic business model and it's currently unclear which things will stay true and which will change. So while this is interesting and food for thought, I don't regard it as the final word on the topic by any means.

The final item on that list normally relies on the assumption that the horror movie in question has a chance to be the next Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch Project, both of which were ludicrously successful and therefore almost certainly highly profitable.

But what of the horror genre more widely?  For every runaway success, there are a whole host of flops and failures which make no money and are barely watched by anyone.  So with a list of all horror movies, let’s take a look at the average profitability.

This research is just one part of an eighteen-month project I conducted studying all aspects of horror movies. The final result is a 200+ page report. You can learn more and grab your own copy at stephenfollows.com/horrorreport

Profitability is always a tricky topic to cover in the film industry. I have added some more expansive notes at the bottom of this article, but here is a precis of the key caveats:

• Profit calculations. Almost no producer, distributor or exhibitor publishes their private accounts, nor do they share exactly how much their film(s) made.  The data for today's article is a mix of real-world insider data and modelled projections. It comes via my Horror Report project which included every horror movie ever made and from Bruce Nash of The Numbers.

• Films budgeted under $500k are not included. Data on these films has a high chance of being inaccurate and, due to the small figures involved, a small inaccuracy can result in big profitability errors.

• Theatrically released. The horror movies mentioned below have all made it to cinemas in the US.  This typically means that they have been acquired by a US distributor, a feat not achieved by all horror movies ever produced.

The overall profitability of horror movies

Across all movies released in US cinemas between 1996 and 2016, horror movies appear to have the highest chance of making a profit, compared to movies within other genres. I estimate that over this period 53% of horror movies released theatrically were likely to have generated profit.

This compares well with the industry average of 37% across all genres, and dramatically outperforms westerns (16% of which are likely to have been profitable), black comedies (28%) drama (31%), and thrillers (32%).

Although this 21-year average is strong when compared to other genres, the figure fluctuates significantly between the years. In the best performing years, 80% of horror releases were likely to have returned a profit, whereas in the worst years the figure falls as low as 22%.

This highlights how dependent the genre is on outliers, and how risky it can be to back a single horror film.

The most profitable types of horror movies

In the Horror Report, I classified all horror movies into a small number of sub-categories.  This allows us to see what types and subgenres of films have the highest correlation with profitability.

Found Footage films appear to be the most profitable type of horror movies released, with almost four out of five likely to have made a profit. Conversely, Monster movies have the poorest success rate, with just over a third likely to have generated a profit.

Amongst the hybrid genres, horror comedies and horror romances have the strongest chance to break even, with horror fantasy and horror action films performing the least well.

The most profitable horror movies

Using the Nash dataset, it’s possible to identify the most profitable horror movies between 2000-16, budgeted over $500,000. Profitability is expressed as a percentage return on the reported production budget. I.e. a film which cost $2 million to make and made an eventual profit of $4 million would have a profitability of 200%.

Profitability correlations

In a study for the American Film Market, Bruce Nash and I showed how the critical reception of a horror film has almost no correlation with the profitability of that film. This differentiates horror movies substantially from movies in other genres, where film critics’ perception of the film is a strong barometer of likely profitability.

Conversely, the score given to a film by audiences does have a strong link with that film’s chance of breaking even. Although horror still has the weakest correlation of all genres.

How do horror films make money?

This is a big topic and one I have addressed previously in this blog (including How movies make money: $100m+ Hollywood blockbusters, How films make money pt2: $30m-$100m movies, How is a cinema’s box office income distributed? and Do Hollywood movies make a profit?).

However, to help horror filmmakers, I have taken seventeen unnamed Hollywood horror movies (budgeted $12m-$75m, released in the past fifteen years) and broken down how they made money. Across this dataset, the average movie cost $108 million to make and release, only $31 million of which was the movie’s production budget. The average income received by the studio was $125 million, producing a $17 million profit (i.e. 15.6% of the total cost).

Want to read more?

The Horror Report contains more detail on the types of horror movies screening on television, as well as covering all other aspects of the film life cycle, right from development through to profitability.  The report is sold on a 'Pay What You Can' model, meaning that you choose the price you pay.

To find out more and to grab a copy of the 200+ page report, please visit stephenfollows.com/horrorreport.

Notes

In this research, profitability was calculated using two datasets:

1. The ‘Nash’ dataset. Nash Information Services, LLC (and their public-facing sister site The-Numbers.com) are the film industry’s leading provider of ‘Comp Reports’ for movie business plans and they have kindly shared with me their internal projections of profit and loss for 2,819 movies. They use a variety of sources to provide figures on how much movies have recouped from each part of the film value chain. Producers, investors and organisations use this data to find successful movies comparable to theirs (known as “comps”) to inform their production and investment decisions.

2. The ‘Complete’ dataset. This includes the 4,092 horror movies released theatrically in the US between 1996 and 2016 for which there is a budget figure online. I created my own rules of thumb, based on real-world examples and projects, in order to estimate the likelihood that each film reached breakeven after all income and costs were taken into account.

These figures are calculated by Nash Information Services using predictive modelling and real-world data. The profitability figure is estimated by comparing the reported production budget with the estimated final Producer’s Net Profit. Factors which could affect the real-world return include the repayment schedule for investors / creditors, profit participation deals, terms of distribution deals, etc. Therefore, these figures should be seen as approximate.

Films budgeted under $500,000 have been excluded as it is tricky to be confident of their profitability using this model. Their budgets are so low that minor changes in the data can have a dramatic effect on their final profitability figure. This means that profitable micro-budget movies such as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project do not appear.

Epilogue

I feel I should add a few notes of caution to all filmmakers and film investors thinking that horror movies present an easy source of money:

1. Filmmaking is hard and unpredictable. These figures only take into account finished films which reached audiences in some form.  If a film does not complete the shoot or post-production work then it's likely that 100% of the investment will be lost.

2. Beware the average. These figures look at overall profitability rates, and the performance of individual films can vary greatly.  There is no such thing as "the perfect film investment" and even the surest bet can fail because of unforeseen factors.

3. Times change.  The film industry is very susceptible to changing tastes and fads, as are audiences (although to a lesser degree).  Therefore, even if you make the perfect film for 2017, if it comes out in 2019 then it may be regarded as out of touch and fail to get the necessary industry support to secure full distribution.

Film is rarely a safe career choice or investment opportunity... though in both cases, it can be a fun one!