Macabre Daily Invades NEW YORK COMIC CON And Gets The Scoop From Blumhouse!

The Diablo Cody-sannce is in full (axe) swing.

If it’s October and you’re at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, you’re either at New York Comic Con, or you’re in line for New York Comic Con.  Or you work there. (in that case, thanks for cleaning up after us!).  This year was another welcome blast of nerdery. If the pictures were any indication, the cosplay was once again on point.  I didn’t clock a single Joaquin Phoenix Joker, but I did see multiple “Pearls,” “Maxines,” and a ton of “Beetlejuices” and “Lydias.”  Horror is alive and well at New York Comic Con and we love to see it.

The mighty Jason Edmiston photographs WAY better than I do.

Somewhere between the massive Goku statue and the tallest dice tower I’ve ever seen were grassroots artists who returned to sell their wares. The fantastic horror artist Jason Edmiston was selling his “Eyes Without a Face” series and previewing his upcoming book collecting his paintings of pop-culture close-ups.  A plethora of artists including Karen Hallion, Rich Wojcicki, Cat Staggs, and Clayton Crain were on hand to sell, draw, and sign their art.  Artist’s Alley eschewed last year’s Barnes & Noble display to have several tables for independent horror and fantasy authors.  We love B&N, but shop indie if you can, folks.

Aside from Friday’s Shudder panel, we were treated to BlumFest. Jason Blum previewed his company’s busiest year yet at the Blumhouse panel.  A recorded video of Kevin Bacon introduced us to the company’s revamped merch site. The always-hilarious Nicole Byer moderated the panel, starting with Blum, himself. The two of them remained on stage while they welcomed some of the company’s biggest stars to introduce their 2025 slate.  Next year, the horror powerhouse will release twice as many films as usual, starting in January with Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man.”  Whannell himself came out to introduce the latest trailer and talk about updating the Universal monster for a modern audience. Blum then showed the trailer for “The Woman in the Yard,” a mysterious thriller about a woman who appears in a black shroud outside of a family’s home.  We don’t know much more than that, but the film was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.  Blum mentioned wanting to work with him since his debut, the underrated “House of Wax” remake.  They finally found the right script, and the film comes out in March.

After Byer cracked jokes about being in a Blumhouse movie (“If you do another ‘Purge,’ let me get wild,” much to Blum’s delight), we saw a short trailer for the company’s first foray into video games “Fear the Spotlight.”  Arriving this Tuesday, October 22nd, the game has a retro survival horror feel.  Next, director Chris Landon came out to introduce the trailer for his next film, “Drop,” with his star Meghann Fahy.  The film is a thriller about a single mother who receives mysterious airdrops to blackmail her to kill her date, or her young son dies.  The intense trailer has shades of “Red Eye” and “Phone Booth.”

Matthew Lillard has really let himself go…

Mike Flanagan came out to talk briefly about “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”  No, Flanagan isn’t involved, but his kids are huge fans and he had to ask.  There was no footage to show, but we got a teaser poster confirming its release date of December 5, 2025.  Of course, Flanagan had to give an update on his sequel to “The Exorcist.”  Since the original is “the scariest film ever made,” he intends it to be his scariest film.  Challenge accepted!  

Scott Derrickson also sent a video message from the set of “The Black Phone 2,” which is about to start shooting with a cast of returners, including Ethan Hawke.  Derrickson talked about how he never intended to make a sequel to his hit film, itself based on a Joe Hill short story, but Hill himself gave him an idea after part one was released.  Whereas the first film was a middle school coming-of-age film, the sequel is set to be a high school coming-of-age film.  I have no idea how you make a sequel to the original, but then again I had no idea how they would adapt Hill’s story, let alone how good it turned out.  So what do I know?  Just that I’ll be there when it releases on October 17th of next year.

The panel ended with a bang when Allison Williams took the stage to discuss the hotly anticipated “M3gan 2.0.,” which just wrapped.  M3gan, her(it?)self appeared to say hi via a recorded message.  “This bitch doesn’t let me go anywhere by myself” Williams cracked about her “diva” co-star.  It was a great note for the panel to end on.  Now if we could only get “The Purge: Byer Beware.”

Antipaxos, represent!

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