{"id":105304,"date":"2025-07-30T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105304\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:58:10","slug":"how-the-horror-streamer-found-success-by-fostering-filmmakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105304\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Horror Streamer Found Success By Fostering Filmmakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTen years after its launch, horror streamer Shudder<\/a> has grown and retained a loyal audience. The secret? Backburning trends and analytics in favor of the personal taste of a dedicated team of fanatics.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor a lot of people, horror is personal. It certainly is for me,\u201d says Shudder\u00a0senior VP of programming and acquisitions, Samuel Zimmerman, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies. \u201cWhen Shudder first started, I was given a lot of support. \u2018You\u2019re the curator of this, because Shudder is meant to feel hand-picked, programmed for people who love the genre.\u2019 As we\u2019ve grown, sticking to that ambition has been really important, because it shines a light on who we are as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShudder started as a niche streaming service launched by AMC Networks midway through the run of the flagship channel\u2019s massive success with \u201cThe Walking Dead.\u201d Originally, the platform was focused on catalog titles curated into different genres by Zimmerman, but exclusives and acquisitions quickly became a focus.<\/p>\n

\n\tCut to 2025, with the streamer coming off of a 2024 that set new viewership records, doubled the total hours watched over the last five years and saw average hours watched per user balloon to an all-time high, according to internal data provided by the company. This year, the surge in popularity continues, with Shudder kicking off its best-ever start in subscriber engagement, based on average hours per user.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmily Gotto, Shudder\u2019s senior VP of acquisitions and production, joined the company in 2017 and was involved in the purchase of three festival titles that set the tone for the type of filmmakers the team wanted to work with: Flying Lotus\u2019 surreal \u201cKuso,\u201d Coralie Fargeat\u2019s neon-drenched thriller \u201cRevenge\u201d and Issa L\u00f3pez\u2019s Spanish-language horror fantasy \u201cTigers Are Not Afraid.\u201d Gotto cites the adventurous filmmaking and bold ideas of this trio as core values for the films that thrive on Shudder.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you\u2019re going to have a platform that specializes and celebrates the world of horror, you need to be able to represent the length and breadth of what that genre encapsulates,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are the more bombastic, straightforward, entertaining, fun movies. And then you\u2019ve got the more challenging titles that are really brave; a lot of our international slate is recognized in terms of its provocation. We really want people to come to the service and find something for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tL\u00f3pez, who went on to direct and co-write \u201cTrue Detective: Night Country,\u201d says she doubts \u201cTigers\u201d would have had the cultural impact and success it received without Shudder\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen they acquired the movie, they waited,\u201d she says. \u201cWe sat together and they said, \u2018We finalized acquiring the movie earlier this year, but we\u2019re not going to drop it until late summer, because that\u2019s the window where we can get more attention for this.\u2019 That gave them the time to build massive word of mouth, so by the time that the movie opened, first in theaters before going to the platform, it was incredible the amount of press and attention \u2026 for a really small movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond pushing boundaries with film, Shudder has also launched unique genre TV shows, including small screen continuations of famous film franchises (\u201cCreepshow,\u201d \u201cThe Creep Tapes\u201d), a reality competition series (\u201cThe Boulet Brothers\u2019 Dragula\u201d), docuseries (\u201cCursed Films\u201d) and more. Nicholas Lazo, Shudder\u2019s VP of development and production, describes how finding the right type of series to put on the platform is challenging.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou want to do something that\u2019s going to have the potential to carry for many seasons moving forward,\u201d he says. \u201cTo keep a TV show scary is a challenge we\u2019ve looked at from every different direction. Timing is really powerful. It enables you to set up a story, tell something really spooky, get people unsettled and send them on their way. The question I\u2019ve always asked myself and our creative partners: \u2018How do you make something scary? In an environment or in a plot line where your main characters have a tendency to die, how are you going to have that return when everybody\u2019s dead? What happens?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGreg Nicotero, an executive producer and director of \u201cThe Walking Dead,\u201d developed the \u201cCreepshow\u201d series at Shudder and is set to launch its first reality competition series this year. He says that Shudder let him have unprecedented latitude to make \u201cCreepshow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey gave me the freedom to explore and let me shift the tone,\u201d Nicotero says. \u201cThey were super supportive in terms of any of the creature designs. They really never gave me a direction. They\u2019re like, \u2018Look, why would we give you notes? You know exactly how to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout the years, Shudder has also increased its theatrical distribution footprint. While it started early with a Neon partnership to get \u201cRevenge\u201d in theaters, there have been more and more buzzy engagements along the way, with films like 2022\u2019s \u201cSkinamarink\u201d and 2023\u2019s \u201cWhen Evil Lurks\u201d drawing in adventurous theatergoers through engagements via IFC Films (now Independent Film Company). While some streamers shy away from theatrical distribution, the experience is an essential part of the horror community, and the team at Shudder fosters that aspect of the fandom.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe model we\u2019ve built released films like \u2018Late Night With the Devil,\u2019 like \u2018Oddity,\u2019 and we will continue to do so,\u201d Gotto says. \u201cThe best thing about Shudder is that it doesn\u2019t isolate content onto an SVOD platform. We are SVOD-led as a brand, but we believe in films getting seen by as wide an audience as possible, be it theatrically or on the small screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking forward, Shudder is planning to celebrate its 10th anniversary with plenty of new content as it approaches the busy Halloween season. Box office successes like this summer\u2019s \u201cClown in a Cornfield\u201d and \u201cDangerous Animals\u201d are set to debut on the streamer, alongside new chapters in the \u201cV\/H\/S\u201d and \u201cHell House LLC\u201d franchises.<\/p>\n

Team Shudder is also leaning in to live events, including a traditional second line parade and party in New Orleans that kicked off a birthday celebration during April\u2019s Overlook Film Festival, a presence at both San Diego and New York Comic Cons, and presentations of some of the company\u2019s key titles in Shudder Anniversary Selects Series set up at arthouse theaters across the country.<\/p>\n

Lazo believes that although the company is growing, sticking to core beliefs set into place in the beginning will continue their success.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think between myself, Sam, Emily and all the other people who work on the brand, we have a wide range of tastes with a killer Venn diagram of overlaps,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to make things for me because I believe that other people are going to want to watch them too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman agrees, noting that one of the best parts of the industry is being curious and surprised, because horror always delivers something different.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into Shudder, I was so burned out on zombie films I never wanted to see another in my life,\u201d he says. \u201cI think for a time we weren\u2019t going to do them. And then you see things that blow your mind: \u2018One Cut of the Dead,\u2019 or \u2018The Sadness.\u2019 There\u2019s always going to be interesting and really good new stuff in whatever subgenre.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years after its launch, horror streamer Shudder has grown and retained a loyal audience. The secret? Backburning…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":105305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,53,16696,67773,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-105304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-shudder","11":"tag-shudder-10th-anni","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114943250317793632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}