‘Barbarian’ director is already one of Hollywood horror’s most coveted talents

If there’s something spooky in your film studio, who are you gonna call? Zach Cregger!

The mastermind behind the 2022 horror hit Barbarian, which grossed $45 million against a $4.5 million production budget, has rightfully been on the up and up ever since. Recently, he and his sophomore feature, a “horror epic” in the vein of Magnolia titled Weapons, were the subjects of a bidding war, in which Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema label ultimately beat out Universal with an eight-figure bid.

Now, per The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger has been roped in for yet another scarefest. Namely, New Line will be tasking him with producing an adaptation of a 39-page short story titled Occupant, in which an old house is moved into a new neighborhood in order to preserve it; a move that may do quite the opposite of preserving the neighborhood’s living residents.

It seems like the only way is skywards for Cregger, who – much like his contemporary Jordan Peele – got his start in internet sketch comedy as the co-founder of famed group The Whitest Kids U’Know, before catapulting himself onto the horror scene with a masterful debut (in Cregger’s case, Barbarian). For such a thing to happen once is a curiosity, but two instances of this could very well indicate a relatively unprecedented paradigm in the entertainment scene.

And if such a paradigm is gifting us talents in the form of Peele and now Cregger, we’ll remain infinitely grateful for this sketch comedy-to-horror maestro pipeline as we hold our breath for a Weapons release date.