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iHorror Previews Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights 25

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While there are dozens of haunted attractions throughout the USA, one Halloween-related event trumps them all: Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood. iHorror was privileged enough to be invited to a recent media preview night for the huge 25th annual Orlando event, and we’ve got the full low-down on what is likely to be HHN’s best line-up to date. Below you’ll find the skinny on all haunted mazes, shows, and scare zones, as well as photos designed to give the curious an early look at what’s in store.

FreddyvsJason

Halloween Horror Nights, HHN, Run, Insidious, Freddy vs. Jason, Body Collectors, Publicity

Freddy vs. Jason - Boiler Room

Leading the pack of nine haunted mazes this year is Freddy vs. Jason, arguably the biggest name to grace this year’s event. According to HHN head honcho Mike Aiello, the maze will begin in Camp Crystal Lake and showcase some of Jason’s greatest kills, before heading over to Elm Street and taking guests inside some of Freddy’s most iconic moments. Then, the maze ends with the big showdown between the two icons, ending in a result some may not expect. Wanna know who wins? You’re gonna have to go to HHN and find out.

AmericanWerewolf

Next on the maze docket is the return of the fan-favorite maze based on an An American Werewolf in London, which is consistently cited by HHN devotees as one of the greatest ever. This year’s maze will be an almost exact recreation of that triumph, although HHN designer Charles Gray assured us that there would be even more werewolf madness for visitors to enjoy/run from.

Jack the Clown 2

One of the coolest mazes by far is 25 Years of Monsters and Mayhem, presented by returning Halloween Horror Nights icon Jack the Clown. As you might imagine, this attraction features characters from some of the best past mazes and scare zones ever to grace HHN’s hallowed history.

RUN 1

BodyCollectors

Expanding on that theme, the mazes RUN: Blood Sweat and Fears and Body Collectors: Recollections capitalize on HHN’s deep past bench by each combining ideas from two previous mazes to create one new frightening bouquet of terror. RUN combines a Running Man-style deadly game show with the population of the deadly Hellgate prison, while Body Collectors combines the titular ghouls with the residents of the Shadybrook asylum that terrorized guests as part of the Psychoscareapy series of attractions.

Purge

Insidious - The Further

Also gracing HHN 25 are mazes based on popular Blumhouse Productions horror series The Purge and Insidious. Both feature iconic moments from all films in their respective franchise, with the former placing guests right in the middle of the annual event where all crime is legal. We press folk got the opportunity to tour the Insidious maze before we left for the night, and wow was it amazing. Even the most hardened HHN vets are unlikely to see some of the craziest scare moments coming. One word: shotgun.

TWD

Asylum in Wonderland

Rounding out the list of haunted mazes are The Walking Dead: The Living and the Dead and Asylum in Wonderland 3-D. The Walking Dead maze takes guests on a journey through season five, including stops in Terminus, the basement of a flooded store that will feature underwater walkers, and the infamous revolving door where poor Bob met his doom. Asylum in Wonderland is an Alice-focused expansion of HHN’s beloved Scary Tales series of mazes, and seeks to answer the question of whether the young woman is really going on adventures in Wonderland or is just really freakin’ nuts.

Body Collectors 2

Of course, monsters and mayhem aren’t only confined to the haunted mazes, as HHN 25 has created five all new scare zones full of horrific scenes ready to scare the pants off attendees. These include a section featuring the aforementioned escaped residents of the Shadybrook Asylum, a section reuniting all of HHN’s famed icons, a section putting a steampunk spin on classic fairy tales, a section focusing on the primal evils that serve as the roots of Halloween itself, and the All-Night Die-In, which alternately features appearances by classic Universal Monsters and modern boogeymen like Chucky and Freddy.

Jack the Clown 1

Finally, HHN guests can take in the 2015 installment of staple comedy show Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure, and brave The Carnage Returns, a new show hosted by Jack the Clown himself. If all that wasn’t enough, most of Universal Studios’ normal rides will be open too.

HHN 25

Halloween Horror Nights 25 begins Friday, September 18th and runs on select nights until November 1st. If you’ve never attended, you really need to. There’s nothing else that celebrates the horror genre quite like HHN, and there’s nothing like the breathless feeling you get when placed inside some of your favorite films of all time.

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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