January 15, 2027. That is when River reaches theaters, which is not where the film was headed a month ago. Josh Giuliano’s slasher was an Independent Film Company and Shudder production bound for streaming until Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Atomic Monster bought it out of the Toronto International Film Festival for north of $10 million.
Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe play two of three estranged siblings who take a boat onto a remote stretch of water to scatter their father’s ashes. The engine dies, the cell service goes with it, and figures start appearing on the shore. Max Mattern plays the younger brother. Dane DiLiegro, the creature performer who wore the Feral Predator suit in Prey, plays the thing in the trees. The film premiered in Midnight Madness on September 10 and carries a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe Play the Sisters
Putting those two in the same boat is the reason the film sold. Levy survived Evil Dead in 2013, the remake nobody asked for that turned out to be one of the meanest studio horror films of its decade, and she is returning for Don’t Breathe 3, whose script is finished. Rothe spent two Happy Death Day films dying on a loop and getting funnier about it, and a third one has a story but no green light. Both of those franchises are moving right now and neither has a date, so the movie that gets either of them back in front of an audience first is this one.
January 15 Is a Blumhouse Pattern
Universal and Blumhouse have treated the first weeks of January as a horror launch window for years. M3GAN opened January 6, 2023. Night Swim took January 5, 2024. Wolf Man moved off a fall date specifically to land on MLK weekend in 2025. January 15, 2027 is the Friday of that same four-day holiday weekend. Handing a first-time director’s $10 million acquisition that slot is a vote of confidence rather than a quiet burial, and it is the clearest signal yet of how Universal rates what it bought in Toronto.
Three Other Films Open the Same Day
River shares January 15, 2027 with Paramount’s Children of Blood and Bone, Amazon MGM’s The Beekeeper 2 and Taika Waititi’s Fing!. Not one of those is a horror film, which leaves a 94% slasher with two recognizable final girls as the only genre option on a holiday weekend. Giuliano wrote and directed it as his first feature, with Steven Schneider, Nick Antosca and Alex Hedlund producing and Jason Blum among the executive producers.
Giuliano has already set his second feature, Occupant, at Blumhouse Atomic Monster with Focus Features distributing, which gives him two films in motion before the first one has opened anywhere. Where River streams after its theatrical run has not been announced by anybody, and with Shudder now out of the picture that answer is no longer obvious.
