‘V/H/S’ – Spooky Pictures and Image Nation Acquire Franchise Rights!

I’m excited to finally share that the franchise I created in 2012, V/H/S, has found a new home with Spooky Pictures and Image Nation Abu Dhabi!

Variety broke the news today that the companies have acquired rights to our popular found-footage horror anthology series from Studio71.

The deal to jointly produce forthcoming titles within the franchise — which debuted at Sundance in 2012 and became a launch pad for up-and-coming genre talents — marks a further step in the six-year partnership between the U.S. genre label, headed by Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity, Pet Sematary) and Roy Lee (The Ring, Weapons), and the deep-pocketed UAE-based studio.

The V/H/S franchise began in 2012, with the first installment featuring found-footage shorts from Adam Wingard, Ti West, Joe Swanberg, and others. Later entries experimented with the format, including 2014’s viral-video-themed V/H/S: Viral, year-based anthologies like 2022’s V/H/S/99 and 2023’s V/H/S/85, and last year’s sci-fi horror collection V/H/S/Beyond. The series has also spawned two feature-length adaptations of its shorts: 2016’s SiREN and 2022’s Kids vs. Aliens.

In our first film:

“When a group of petty criminals is hired by a mysterious party to retrieve a rare piece of found footage from a rundown house in the middle of nowhere, they soon realize that the job isn’t going to be as easy as they thought. In the living room, a lifeless body holds court before a hub of old television sets, surrounded by stacks upon stacks of VHS tapes. As they search for the right one, they are treated to a seemingly endless number of horrifying videos, each stranger than the last.”

“It’s a natural evolution,” said Image Nation chief content officer Ben Ross, who noted: “This is a piece of IP that we all were very fond of that became available and we’re very excited about it, because one of our mantras is we like to work with emerging talent.”

“Horror anthologies are generally difficult to mount,” Schneider said. “The fact that the ‘V/H/S’ brand and franchise has not just persevered, but thrived — and continues to grow in popularity because of the consistent level of quality control — that was an amazing opportunity for us to get into.”