Focus Features and Blumhouse Atomic have dated Nicolas Curcio's horror debut. Play House, the micro-budget film that won the first Fantastic Pitches competition at Fantastic Fest, will open wide in theaters on April 2, 2027, with Universal Pictures International handling the international release. Focus Features announced the date yesterday. Check out the official post down below:
Curcio directed the film and wrote it with Kirby Gladstein, his creative partner and now his wife. Will Harrison, Jessica Sula, Jordan Gonzalez and James Urbaniak lead the cast. Curcio and Gladstein produced through their company Skinny Ghost alongside Ben Gojer, Jack Forbes and Derek Tramont. The executive producers are Ahbra Perry of Chroma, Daniel Levin of Narrative, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer, and Jason Blum of Blumhouse Atomic.
What Play House Is About
Focus Features' official synopsis reads: "While renovating a dilapidated house in hopes of winning back his ex, Elliot (Will Harrison) discovers VHS tapes of a forgotten children's TV show, Mr. Morton's Monster Alley. As his obsession with the mystery behind the tapes grows, the sinister world of the show begins bleeding into his own life with horrifying consequences."
Fantastic Fest's program notes add more detail. Elliot is able to buy a run-down home in Los Angeles County after the death of his mother, and his best friend Alden, played by Gonzalez, helps him fix it up so he can win back his ex-girlfriend, played by Sula. While cleaning the basement, Elliot finds old VHS tapes stuffed into a broken water heater. Each tape holds an episode of a children's program that nobody online can identify, hosted by Urbaniak's Mr. Morton alongside a cast of monster puppets.
The festival lists Harrison from Daisy Jones and the Six, Gonzalez from The Long Walk, Sula from Michael and Urbaniak from Oppenheimer. Nina Millin, Kevin Keppy, Koda Zephyr, Chloe Cleary and Oliver Axl Hicks round out the cast. The film runs 85 minutes.
From A Pitch Contest To A Studio Release
Fantastic Pitches launched in 2025 as a partnership between Fantastic Fest, the Alamo Drafthouse genre festival in Austin, Texas, and the independent genre label Chroma, which is backed by Narrative Distribution. The contest was created for the festival's 20th anniversary. Finalists pitch micro-budget genre features live to a panel of judges during the festival, and the winner receives $100,000 in funding, a distribution deal with Chroma and a guaranteed world premiere at the next year's Fantastic Fest. The rules require the finished film to be ready within one calendar year of winning.
Curcio, Gladstein and producer Ben Gojer won the first edition onstage at The Highball inside the Alamo Drafthouse. Divide/Conquer, the company behind M3GAN and The Black Phone 2, later joined Chroma on the project as executive producers. According to the festival, the team took a one-week break between production and post so Curcio and Gladstein could get married.
Play House made its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 19, almost exactly a year after the pitch win, with simultaneous screenings across 5 theaters that all sold out. A second showing on September 22 sold out across 4 more. Focus Features and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster acquired worldwide rights in October and confirmed at the time that the film would arrive in 2027.
Curcio returned to the 2026 contest as a juror alongside Gore Verbinski and Catherine Hardwicke. This year's winner is "Father Figure" from writer and director Connor Martin and producer Josh Farnworth, a 1970s-set wedding folk horror film that will premiere at Fantastic Fest 2027.
Chroma released an official clip from the film ahead of the premiere:
Chroma's description of the clip says the "small, pleading voices behind the puppets sound far too real," and that "the longer he watches, the more the house remembers what happened in it."
Focus Features And Blumhouse's Horror Slate
Play House is the latest film from the partnership between Focus Features and Blumhouse that released Curry Barker's Obsession. That film premiered in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 and opened in U.S. theaters on May 15, 2026. Its breakout character later came to Fortnite, as covered in Obsession's Nikki Freeman Is Now A Fortnite Skin, And Not Every Horror Fan Is Thrilled About It.
Barker's next film, Anything But Ghosts, opens on May 7, 2027, about 5 weeks after Play House. It follows a group of fame-seeking "ghosthunters" who find themselves in over their heads, and it stars Cooper Tomlinson, Barker, Violet McGraw, Chris Reinacher, Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul. Barker and Tomlinson wrote it, and Hendricks and Gilreath are producers again. Josh Giuliano's Occupant, also produced by Blum, Hendricks and Gilreath, is in production. Barker is also attached to A24's new take on the slasher classic, as covered in Texas Chainsaw Massacre A24 "Reimagining" Sets Obsession Director Curry Barker To Helm.
Would you buy a ticket for a $100,000 horror film about a cursed kids' show on VHS, or do you want to see a full trailer first?
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