Blumhouse Bets More Than $10 Million on River

Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Atomic Monster are closing a deal of more than $10 million for Joshua Giuliano’s slasher River. Independent Film Company and Shudder came into Toronto holding the rights, then put them in play after the film opened Midnight Madness on September 10.

Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe star as sisters stuck on a stalled motorboat with their brother while a faceless killer watches from the trees. The sale is Toronto’s first eight-figure move of the festival, and it lands on a movie Giuliano wrote as a spec seven years ago while driving for Postmates in Hollywood.

Opening Night at the Royal Alexandra

River had its 92-minute Midnight Madness world premiere at 11:59 p.m. on September 10 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. Public and press shows followed at Scotiabank Theatre Toronto on September 11, with a later festival slot on September 18. The U.S. premiere sits in the Fantastic Fest window that runs September 17 through 24.

Three siblings reunite to scatter their father’s ashes from the family boat. Lucy (Levy) and Drew (Max Mattern) stayed home with him. Carla (Rothe) left for the city. The motor dies under a derelict bridge, miles from a signal, and Dane DiLiegro, the creature performer from Prey, waits on the bank as a tall, featureless figure.

Peter Kuplowsky, who programs Midnight Madness, wrote the festival’s own warning label into the notes: Carpenter confidence, a new Shape, and a current that does not let go.

Conducted with the canny confidence of a Carpenter, John to be precise, Giuliano has carved a whole new “Shape” in terror.

Peter Kuplowsky, Midnight Madness programmer, TIFF film notes

TIFF posted from the opening-night floor with Levy onstage, selling horror as a live room sport rather than a prestige lane.

Horror is punk rock 🤘

Jane Levy shares what she loves about horror during the World Premiere of Joshua Giuliano's RIVER, the Opening Night film of the #TIFF26 Midnight Madness programme. #ShotOnPixel pic.twitter.com/hOXPnHq8Qy

— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) September 11, 2026

The Friday public show played loud, with unforced screams in the water attacks. That noise, not a distributor vacuum, is what put a film that already had a home back on the market.

He Wrote the Spec Between Deliveries

Giuliano grew up in Indiana, studied at Taylor University, then took an MFA in directing at the American Film Institute. His festival sample was the 2018 short In Sound We Live Forever, which split a slasher so the killing is heard before the wreckage is seen. Fantasia gave it a special mention. He used that short to shop River.

On August 28, 2019, Tango Entertainment took the spec, with Nick Antosca and Alex Hedlund producing through Eat the Cat. The script followed three siblings stranded on a country river and hunted by a masked killer. Giuliano wrote it on a Postmates route in Hollywood.

THE SEVEN-YEAR ROAD TO TORONTO

1. 2018: In Sound We Live Forever plays festivals and becomes the directing sample for River.
2. August 28, 2019: Tango Entertainment acquires the spec Giuliano wrote while driving deliveries.
3. November 5, 2025: Levy, Rothe, Mattern, and DiLiegro are announced; Independent Film Company and Shudder take U.S. theatrical and streaming plans.
4. 2025: Principal photography in Monongalia County and Marion County, West Virginia.
5. September 10, 2026: World premiere as the opening night film of Midnight Madness.
6. September 11, 2026: Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Focus Features set Occupant, his next film, less than a day later.
7. September 14, 2026: Universal and Blumhouse Atomic Monster move to buy River for more than $10 million.

Steven Schneider of Spooky Pictures joined Antosca and Hedlund as a producer. Jason Blum is already an executive producer on River through Blumhouse Atomic Monster, which is why the later bid reads less like a cold raid and more like a house doubling down on a filmmaker it already knew.

Why Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe Cannot Be Fodder

A four-person slasher cannot treat anyone as meat. Giuliano spends the first movement on eulogies, beer the father liked, and the sisters’ fight over what kind of man he was, then lets the threat arrive as a body on the shore. The patience is the trap. You learn how each sibling handles conflict before anyone bleeds.

THE BOAT AND THE BANK

• Lucy, Jane Levy: The Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe veteran, also in TIFF 2014’s Bang Bang Baby, plays the sister who stayed; several shots crop to the top half of her face so the fear sits in the forehead as much as the eyes.
• Carla, Jessica Rothe: The Happy Death Day lead, and TIFF 2023’s Boy Kills World, plays the sister who left, then has to swim for help when the engine dies.
• Drew, Max Mattern: The younger brother, billed off television’s Cape Fear, is stuck as mediator until the night forces him to move.
• The killer, Dane DiLiegro: Prey’s Predator performer, described in the festival notes as tall, statuesque, and blank, a malevolence with no face to read.

Putting two proven final girls in the same boat is not prestige casting. It is the cheapest star power horror has, drawn from its own alumni, and the eight-figure bid is a wager that those names still put people in seats. DiLiegro’s body is the other half of that bet: a killer who can be a Shape in wide shots without a line of dialogue.

The Killer Raises a Hand and Day Goes Black

After Carla makes it back to the boat, the man on the shore lifts a hand and the sunny day drops into night. The Mondo Boys’ orchestral score mixes with leaves and animal noise, as if the woods clocked the change. Giuliano does not say whether the killer owns the weather, whether the siblings are already dead, or whether the night is a loop. The film just keeps cutting.

On water, cinematographer Nick Matthews holds tight and low so the river feels like a room. On land, he pulls back. Giuliano likes to let the siblings see the worst thing first, linger on their faces, then reverse so the audience catches up a few seconds late. Sometimes a speck in the frame is already walking toward them.

The picture refuses the “elevated” sales pitch even as it steals a cosmic beat. Family trauma is on the table, Carla and Lucy do not agree about their father, and the script still will not nail the murders to daddy issues. Hell shows up on its own clock. The siblings fight with a hammer, a knife, and whatever the boat will give them.

Critics who like it keep using the same mash: home-invasion dread plus a Friday the 13th water scare. Doug Jamieson called it “simple, savage, and refreshingly uninterested in overcomplicating its slasher pleasures.” Brian Tallerico said it is “the kind of movie that horror fans will truly jump for, something they’ll tell their friends they need to see to believe.” The knock, when it comes, is that the machine is a little familiar. That split is useful to a buyer. The market is paying for craft and pairing, not a new bible.

Long Nights on a West Virginia River

Most of the film was shot in 2025 in Monongalia County and Marion County, on a real river and a man-made pond, with long night days in the water. Levy told Giuliano the next movie would make him wonder how he ever agreed to this one, on the budget and on the current. Giuliano has said he learned the Jaws lesson and wants the follow-up on land.

Editor Thom Newell keeps the 92 minutes lean once the boat stalls. Matthews’s land frames give the siblings somewhere to run and still make help look theoretical. The festival’s content notes flag explicit violence, accident trauma, coarse language, mature themes, and strobing effects. That is not garnish. The shoot’s hardship is on screen as wet, tired people who cannot get a signal.

Sony’s $8 Million Bid Was Not Enough

The Independent Film Company and Shudder announcement in November 2025 had River as a Shudder Original headed for an IFC theatrical window, then the service. That plan cracked after the midnight screening. Other buyers wanted it. Focus Features, Paramount, A24, and Netflix had stepped back by September 12. Sony Pictures was the last studio in with $8 million. On September 14, Sony was out, and Universal with Blumhouse Atomic Monster came in above $10 million. Universal had no comment.

WHO CAME FOR THE RIGHTS

Last year Focus paid around $15 million out of Midnight Madness for Curry Barker’s Obsession, which went on to take more than $513 million worldwide. Every subsequent bid in that lane is doing that math. River is not Obsession, and a 89 percent of 19 critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.7 out of 10, is a strong festival card rather than a coronation. The Metacritic score of 67 from 6 critics sits in the same band: generally favorable, not a blank check.

Sam Zimmerman now leads the indies slate at Blumhouse Atomic Monster. He worked with Giuliano on River while at Shudder. The acquisition grows out of that relationship as much as out of the midnight cheers.

Blumhouse Booked His Next Film Overnight

On September 11, less than a day after the Royal Alexandra show, Giuliano was set to write and direct Occupant for Blumhouse Atomic Monster, Divide/Conquer, and Spooky Pictures. Focus Features holds worldwide rights, with Universal Pictures International on overseas. Plot details are sealed. Jason Blum, Greg Gilreath, Adam Hendricks, and Schneider produce. Zimmerman is among the executive producers.

RIVER AT A GLANCE

• Runtime: 92 minutes, stylized on screen as RIVER in all caps.
• Festival: Midnight Madness opening film, September 10, 2026, then Fantastic Fest.
• Rights fight: IFC and Shudder in; Universal and Blumhouse Atomic Monster closing at more than $10 million.
• Next: Occupant at Focus, plot undisclosed; Giuliano has said he is already thinking about a River sequel.

The house is running the Curry Barker playbook: flip for the debut, lock the follow-up before the first film has a date. Blumhouse Atomic Monster did not produce River the way it produced Obsession, which makes the overnight Occupant deal the cleaner tell. They wanted the filmmaker even if they had to buy the first movie from someone else.

Giuliano’s shorts including In Sound We Live Forever already argued that sound and image do not have to confess at the same time. River spends 92 minutes proving he can do that with two scream queens, a stalled boat, and a man on the bank who does not explain himself. The theatrical date is not set. The bet that is already on the table is the check Universal and Blumhouse are trying to write, and the second film they booked before the first one left Toronto.