Editorials
9 Horror Franchises That Should Be Turned into TV Shows
The film and television industry loves dipping back into previous intellectual properties. And though it’s sometimes depressing, it’s also understandable. If a recognizable name or character has the potential to bring in a larger audience than an original concept, they’re going to try it.
With the explosion of long-form content on TV and streaming outlets, it makes sense that they’d also try to milk those concepts for all they’re worth by turning them into series. It’s not a totally new phenomenon, but the frequency has increased in recent years.
The movies chosen to turn into TV series fall into a few categories: Good or Great (Hannibal, Ash vs. Evil Dead, The Exorcist, Bates Motel, Wolf Creek); Fine (The Dead Zone, From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream); Bad (Damien); Series’ Which Never Had a Chance (Tremors: the Series, Blade: the Series, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven); and Series’ That Are Barely Connected to Their Source Material (Friday the 13th: the Series, Freddy’s Nightmares).
With already announced series’ for The Mist, The Lost Boys, American Gods, and Tremors (again) on their way, perhaps there’s room in the television landscape for a few other horror franchises to become TV’s next big hit. And we’ve got some ideas about that…
Hellraiser
Frankly, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already. With a deep mythology that runs back centuries, an established presence in the distant future and the 1700s France, and a whole gaggle of visually stunning and disturbing Cenobites just waiting in the wings for their moment to shine, this series has the potential to connect with fans who love the over-the-top weirdness of American Horror Story and the intricate world-building of Game of Thrones. Given that the series has been direct-to-video since the fifth installment, it already feels at home on the small screen.
George A. Romero’s ‘Living Dead’ Series
Though there is an overall sense of zombie fatigue, not to mention the fact that series’ like The Walking Dead and Z Nation have picked clean the bones of what Romero began decades ago, it’s still compelling to consider what kind of intriguing social commentary he could find if given a decent television budget and the hands-off approach of a network like Starz. He could go in a couple of directions, either continuing the anthology-esque nature of the series and having standalone episodes that all take place in the same universe, or he could start to weave together narratives he’s been creating for forty years. Either way, it would be a fitting conclusion to the modern zombie phenomenon to give the man who reinvigorated it the opportunity to finish telling his story.
Saw
Even though another installment of this film is on its way, this is a series that has always begged for the opportunity to stretch its narrative legs. Juggling the personal story of Jigsaw (and his disciples), the people in the traps (and their families or significant others), and the police and FBI, every entry in the series is stuffed with plot machinations. The way the series was produced (with a new film coming out every year at the same time for seven years straight) already operated like a miniature television studio, and the stories would benefit from having a writer’s room to brainstorm all the traps and last-act plot twists.
Resident Evil/Underworld
These wouldn’t be combined into a single show, but they’re grouped here because they have something in common: they would make fun horror-action series’ on Syfy. The network, known primarily for cheesy movies and the occasional brilliant show like Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse, has always gravitated towards action-driven series’ that were out there, but not TOO out there: 12 Monkeys, Dark Matter, Killjoys, Van Helsing. The tone and pacing of movie series’ like Resident Evil and Underworld fit the mold perfectly, with solid genre trappings and just enough silliness and absurdity to appeal to the demographic.
The Purge
No film universe with the expansive and complex background of The Purge should be limited to only taking place for a few hours during one night a year. If the world of The Purge were expanded into a continuing series, the audience would be allowed to see the inner workings of life outside the annual Purge; the political and financial divide, the quiet resentments building up over a year, the psychopaths gleefully counting down the days until the next Purge. And who would know better about whether or not the movies would work in this format than James DeMonaco, the creator of the films, who already considered making it a series. We’re getting a fourth installment of the movie franchise, but there may be a TV show here yet.
The Conjuring
This film series is the most perfectly constructed concept to turn into a TV series: husband and wife supernatural investigators struggle to live a normal, happy life with their family while simultaneously battling demons in the cases they find. It already has the built-in “case of the week” element, and a great gimmick in the “based on a true story” angle. And when the story has the room to breathe that television allows, it will give the creators more time to explore the family dynamic and perhaps start to create a larger mythology for the demon creatures that seem to have targeted Lorraine and Ed. The only downside: television might not be able to afford both Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson every week, and I can’t imagine what two other actors they could find that would embody them so wonderfully.
Re-Animator
Making a successful, sustained horror series is hard enough; adding comedy is even more challenging. No one tried it in earnest for a long time, but then Ash vs. Evil Dead came along and shattered all expectations for serialized horror-comedy on television. Now that the way has been paved, it’s time for Herbert West to get his due. The series could either pick up where the films left off, with Herbert West out of prison and experimenting in secret; or it could totally reboot the story. Starz has Ash vs. Evil Dead, IFC has Stan against Evil; Epix, what are you up to?
V/H/S
Many people say that Black Mirror has already taken the mantle of “the modern Twilight Zone.” While that is partly true, one aspect of Black Mirror that is different from The Twilight Zone is its origins: while Black Mirror is brilliant dark satire, it has a specifically British sensibility. The Twilight Zone was as distinctly American as its creator/host Rod Serling, and much of the commentary of the series was filtered through that lens. All three entries of V/H/S touch on uniquely American perspectives in their entries, giving the found footage and anthology subgenres a geographical specificity; getting a weekly half-hour of segments of varying length, style, and plot (but all still in the “captured footage” arena) might lead to another great renaissance in television anthology storytelling.
Which of these would you love to see? And can you think of any others?
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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