'Billions' Star Officially Leads a Real-Time Vampire Thriller Set After World War II in First Look
Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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Cinema is rife with depictions of World War II and the lives of everyday people during the costliest conflict in history, but the period in the direct aftermath can be just as intriguing. The world was left to pick up the pieces from the destruction and bloodshed as order began to shift, beginning an era of globalization and the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as parallel superpowers destined to collide. A new independent thriller, Red Ink, will soon explore that era from the perspective of a newsroom navigating a complicated media landscape. However, it comes with a vampiric twist.
Red Ink follows the editor of a New York newspaper in the Big Apple, played by Billions star Toby Leonard Moore, who finds himself tasked with crafting the nation's response to a mysterious affliction that's begun sweeping the globe. However, in trying to deliver the truth to the people, he finds himself caught between the powers that be. Constructing the message becomes a process that he quickly learns may be even more monstrous than what's happening in the world around them, as he faces pressure from all sides. It's billed as an interrogation of "media propaganda, institutional power, and exploitation" under extraordinary circumstances in a time that's about to be rocked by McCarthyism.
In anticipation of its international premiere in the Directors’ Debuts Competition at Camerimage 2026 in November, Collider is excited to share a first look at Red Ink, focused on Moore. Dressed in a period-appropriate outfit with stacks of paper and folders across his desk and a cigarette in hand, he looks the part of an overworked journalist facing a gargantuan task. Adding to the moody and tense nature of the film is the dim lighting in his office, creating a sense that darkness is creeping all around him in one form or another. While he was a regular presence on Billions, Moore brings a varied resume to the role, having appeared in the first John Wick and David Fincher's Mank, with his last film appearance being Jon Bell's 2024 folk horror, The Moogai.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring
Four horror franchises. Four completely different ways of scaring you. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes sure nobody believes you. One is already in your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually watch horror, and find out which nightmare was built for you.
😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger)
🧸Chucky(Child's Play)
📞Scream(Ghostface)
🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files)
01
Which horror scene makes you cover your eyes? Four classic images. One of them is worse than the others for you.
02
You are home alone and you hear a noise. First thought? Everybody has one. It arrives before you have decided anything.
03
Which horror movie rule would you break first? Everybody thinks they would survive. Almost nobody actually does.
04
Something genuinely frightening happens. What do you do? Not in a film. In your actual living room, tonight.
05
How do you actually watch a horror film? Be honest about this one. Nobody is checking.
06
Somebody offers you serious money. Which do you still refuse? The amount does not matter. There is one on this list you are not doing.
07
Which feeling stays with you a week after the film? Good horror does not stop when the credits do.
08
Something wakes you at 3am. What is the worst possibility? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare.
The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…
Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what it would leave behind.
Elm Street
Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever won that particular argument.
- Freddy is horror's cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
- You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your own head is where this does its damage.
- These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
- You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.
Chucky
Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.
- Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
- You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You know that feeling from real life too.
- The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you have met those adults.
- By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.
Scream
Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.
- Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be somebody who was at the party.
- You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the same way you watch films.
- The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
- Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.
The Conjuring
Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.
- The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
- Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
- This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
- Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one standing in the hallway.
Who Is Behind 'Red Ink'?
Joining Moore is a deep ensemble cast, headlined by Men in Black's Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Wednesday star Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Loki alum Eugene Cordero. Rounding out the bunch are Rose Reid, Kyle Selig, Mike Doyle, D.B. Sweeney, Oona Laurence, Josh Plasse, Michael Barra, Max von Essen, and Melissa Putterman-Hoffman. Incline Studios produced Red Ink, and its co-founders, Benjamin J. Murray and Michael Christensen, served as directors for the thriller. Christensen also penned the screenplay and joined Murray and Marty Lucero in developing the original story. The filmmakers shot the production in real time, with uninterrupted one-shots designed to recreate the frantic feeling of a newsroom navigating the biggest breaking story of their lives.
Red Ink opens at the 34th edition of Camerimage, which runs from November 7 through 14 in Toruń, Poland. Check out the exclusive first image above and stay tuned at Collider for more.
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