Focus Features & Blumhouse-Atomic Monster Snap Up Micro-Budget Horror Film ‘Play House’ From Nicolas Curcio

EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster have snapped up Play House, a micro-budget horror film from Nicolas Curcio, in a competitive situation, sources tell Deadline.

We’re told this was a seven-figure deal for worldwide rights, excluding Latin America and India. This is a major coup for Curcio’s debut feature, a film made for not much more than $100,000 — roughly 13% of the reported budget of Curry Barker’s low-budget Focus phenomenon Obsession.

Curcio set the project in motion last September after winning the inaugural Fantastic Pitches contest, a micro-budget genre initiative spearheaded by Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest and indie studio Chroma, thereby securing funding and distribution. He returned to Fantastic Fest to premiere the film last month.

Play House will release in theaters in 2027, with Universal Pictures International handling international distribution.

Written by Curcio and wife/creative partner Kirby Gladstein, the film follows Elliott (Will Harrison), who while renovating a dilapidated house to win back his ex, discovers VHS tapes of an unaired children’s TV show which begins to seep into his life, threatening his last chance at reconciliation.

Pic’s cast also includes Jessica Sula, Jordan Gonzalez, and James Urbaniak. Curcio and Gladstein produced for Skinny Ghost, alongside Ben Gojer, Jack Forbes, and Derek Tramont. Exec producers include Ahbra Perry via Chroma, Daniel Levin via Narrative, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer, and Jason Blum of Blumhouse Atomic-Monster. NPerry repped the film for sales via Narrative Distribution.

While Universal art-house label Focus Features has not historically been known as a major horror distributor, outside of recent work with Robert Eggers on titles like Nosferatu and the upcoming Werwulf, they’re now aggressively expanding into the space as supporters of emerging filmmakers, after seeing Obsession break out as their highest-grossing film ever at over $522M worldwide. Divide/Conquer’s Hendricks and Gilreath — EPs on Play House — previously brought that film to Blum, who set it up at Focus, along with his follow-up Anything but Ghosts, dated for May 7, 2027.

You can expect much more to come from the collaboration between Focus Features and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster. Most recently, they announced their partnership on director Josh Giuliano’s Occupant following the buzzy TIFF debut of his first horror film, River.

Curcio is a rising filmmaker who recently set up his high-concept thriller spec Sweet Spot, penned with Gladstein, at Paramount Primal, as we first reported. A writer on Sony Pictures Animation’s hit GOAT, he has developed projects for multiple studios, including a live-action Magic School Bus for Universal and an adaptation of Planet of the Nerds for Paramount. His script Barron made the Black List in 2019.

Curcio is also known for running a popular screenwriting TikTok account with nearly 200K followers and over 10M likes, and has partnered with studios like Neon, A24 and Paramount to promote films. He is repped by 3 Arts, UTA, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.