{"id":844491,"date":"2026-09-11T20:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T20:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844491\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T20:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T20:14:09","slug":"josh-giuliano-to-direct-occupant-horror-film-for-blumhouse-atomic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844491\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Giuliano To Direct ‘Occupant’ Horror Film For Blumhouse Atomic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Following last night\u2019s TIFF world premiere of his buzzy debut feature\u00a0River<\/a>, Josh Giuliano<\/a> already has his next project \u2014 another horror film with a distributor on board and major backing.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s set to write and direct Occupant<\/a> for Blumhouse Atomic Monster<\/a>, Divide\/Conquer<\/a> and Spooky Pictures<\/a>, with Focus Features<\/a> distributing. Focus holds worldwide rights to the project and has set Universal Pictures International to handle international distribution.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlot details for Occupant are being kept under wraps.<\/p>\n

\n\tProducers are Jason Blum for Blumhouse Atomic Monster, Greg Gilreath and Adam Hendricks for Divide\/Conquer, and Steven Schneider for Spooky Pictures. Executive producers include Daniel Bekerman, Derek Bish\u00e9, Neil Mathieson, Allie Steffler, Sam Zimmerman, and Jeremy Kulyk. The film is set up in association with Closer Media.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiuliano came to Blumhouse Atomic Monster through Zimmerman, who oversees the slate after joining earlier this year<\/a> from Shudder. A fan of his work, he got the ball rolling on the\u00a0Occupant\u00a0partnership after connecting the filmmaker with Divide\/Conquer\u2019s Gilreath and Hendricks, who have a first-look deal<\/a> with Blumhouse Atomic Monster on which we were first to report last December. The project reunites many of the parties behind Curry Barker\u2019s breakout\u00a0Obsession, one of the films igniting recent fervor around young digital native filmmakers. That one was also released by Focus, becoming the studio\u2019s top-grossing film ever at over $512M worldwide.<\/p>\n

\n\tComing off a massive summer with Obsession and the Atomic Monster-produced Kane Parsons debut\u00a0Backrooms, Blumhouse Atomic Monster is taking the same approach with Giuliano as they did with Barker; they set up Barker\u2019s next project Anything but Ghosts at Focus after flipping for his debut feature, though they don\u2019t have a producing credit on Giuliano\u2019s first film as they did on Barker\u2019s. (Spooky Pictures\u2019 Schneider was part of the producing team, alongside Nick Antosca and Alex Hedlund.)<\/p>\n

\n\tPremiering as part of TIFF\u2019s Midnight Madness program, Giuliano\u2019s\u00a0River\u00a0stars Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe and Max Mattern as three estranged siblings who reunite in their hometown after the death of their father. They set out to scatter his ashes at his favorite spot on a remote river, but when their boat breaks down, the trip devolves into a waking nightmare. Dane DiLiegro also stars.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn alumnus of the American Film Institute\u2019s directing program, Giuliano\u2019s shorts have won awards at genre festivals like Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, and FrightFest. He is represented by CAA, Kaplan\/Perrone Entertainment, and Marios Rush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Following last night\u2019s TIFF world premiere of his buzzy debut feature\u00a0River, Josh Giuliano already has his next project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[205285,305522,88,3098,357418,206,101892,21980,252202,46687],"class_list":["post-844491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-blumhouse-atomic-monster","tag-divide-conquer","tag-entertainment","tag-focus-features","tag-josh-giuliano","tag-movies","tag-occupant","tag-river","tag-spooky-pictures","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}