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- Hollywood Tech Nerd Halloween 2025
Happy Halloween Hollywood tech nerds!
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Hollywood Tech Nerd Halloween 2025
It’s my favorite time of year: when the person banging on my door wearing a scary mask is probably not my Aunt Joan! Probably!
The annual tradition around these parts is a special Halloween newsletter where I compile a few creepy stories and horror movie recommendations for your reading and viewing pleasure. So let’s get started!
YouTube: The Modern Film School
There’s a great piece in The Wrap about Shelby Oaks filmmaker Chris Stuckmann’s journey from making YouTube reviews to directing a feature length horror film, following in the footsteps of other YouTubers like Kogonada, Michael Shanks, and the Philippou brothers.
“I think there was probably a lot of doubt from some of the managers I met with because there weren’t too many YouTubers who had made movies at that time,” Stuckmann remembered.
That’s definitely changing now!
How Did “Horror Fatigue” Turn Out in 2025?
Speaking of horror films, last year’s Halloween newsletter looked at a Hollywood Reporter article on “horror fatigue,” the concern that audiences in 2025 would turn sour on horror films. I was skeptical about this being an issue, writing:
Faithful readers know this is one of my long-running bugaboos: how much difficulty the studios seem to have in understanding what makes people roll out to see something in theaters. As Crow notes, horror has infinite appeal because “the genre is elastic and open to constant interpretation and reinvention.” Smile 2 and Terrifier 3 can coexist at the same multiplex because they are structurally nothing alike even though they both belong to the same genre.
So was “horror fatigue” an issue at the box office in 2025? I would say the evidence is somewhat inconclusive. One the one hand, check out how well Black Phone 2 did:
In another milestone, “Black Phone 2” is a commercial winner for Blumhouse after a rough theatrical year for the low-budget horror empire. The scary sequel added $10 million overseas in its second weekend of release, bringing ticket sales to $31.3 million internationally and $80.4 million globally. Universal distributed the film, which cost $30 million.
That said:
“Black Phone 2″ easily became Blumhouse’s highest-grossing release of the year because its other recent releases — January’s “Wolf Man” ($34 million), March’s “The Woman in the Yard” ($23 million), April’s “Drop” ($28 million), and June’s “M3GAN 2.0” ($39 million ) — flatlined in theaters.
I think there’s a bigger box office problem here than horror fatigue!
A Different Kind of Horror Story
Regular readers know I love picking on The Hollywood Reporter, but I give them major props for this crazy story about film producer David Ozer, who repeatedly scammed hopeful writers and producers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars:
One of those in a sudden panic was an established screenwriter who would later be referred to in the federal case as C.C… As alleged in that case, in January 2024, he’d given Ozer $30,000 as a short-term bridge loan, supposedly to help the producer lock in an actor he needed for a crime series called Endangered, about rhino poaching in South Africa.
Read the whole thing, it’s a fantastic tale of conning and grifting. If only THR could apply these journalistic standards to their AI reporting!
Steve’s Halloween Horror Pic Picks
I’m a big horror head, and these are a few recent horror films to which I give my full-throated HTN seal of approval!
28 Years Later - one of my favorite films of 2025 full stop, currently streaming on Netflix
Bring Her Back - really enjoyed this second outing from the aforementioned Philippous, currently streaming on HBO Max
Companion - this is lots of fun and very relevant, currently streaming on multiple services
Kristy - a forgotten gem from 2014, check it out if you love The Strangers, currently streaming on multiple services
Sinners - more than just a vampire movie, another one of the biggest original films of the year, currently streaming on HBO Max
Sweet treats (3 links worth scarfing down candy corn)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Sora reveals how broken deepfake detection is. (link)
Why podcast advertisers are holding back over $1 billion. (link)
Want to beta test for Zeiss? (link)