YouTube stars have officially put Hollywood on notice. Within the first half of 2026, the box office has seen not one, but three stars from the video-sharing platform make the jump to the big screen and crush expectations with their respective horror films. The first was Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach‘s adaptation of David Szymanski‘s dystopian sci-fi video game Iron Lung, which gave Sam Raimi‘s Send Help a run for its money and earned an impressive $51 million despite being self-produced and distributed. Then, May saw Curry Barker and Kane Parsons take the spotlight, the former becoming the industry’s most coveted new filmmaker after releasing Obsession to universal acclaim and over $374 million, while the latter adapted his viral horror series into the $331 million megahit Backrooms with A24. Now, everyone is scrambling to find the next potential breakout star, and that includes Steven Spielberg.
The legendary Oscar winner behind classics like Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Schindler’s List, and the new alien invasion flick Disclosure Day has now boarded a feature adaptation that comes from the same realm as Backrooms. According to a new report, he joined United Artists‘ Scott Stuber and Amazon MGM Studios in acquiring the film rights to the analog horror series The Mandela Catalogue after a heated bidding war including 11 studios. Spielberg and Holly Bario will produce through his Amblin Entertainment, while series creator Alex Kister will take the reins as director with a screenplay he adapted with Tyler Clifton. Both Kister and Clifton are also producing alongside Aaron B. Koontz for Paper Street Pictures, and Stuber and Nick Nesbitt for UA.
The Mandela Catalogue unfolds in the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin, where otherworldly beings known as Alternates have begun to invade the community. Sinister and shape-shifting, these distorted doppelgängers mimic and replace human beings with the ultimate goal of eradicating the species by psychologically tormenting them to their breaking point. Each episode features found footage and other mixed media showing harrowing encounters with Alternates, instructions on how to handle them, and messages from a false Archangel Gabriel, who leads the Alternates in their purpose, among other things. Launched in 2021, the series now consists of six volumes and 13 other shorts by Kister that expand the world and the lore of the menacing mimics.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
‘The Mandela Catalogue’ Could Continue Analog Horror’s Hollywood Breakout
In terms of viewership, The Mandela Catalogue is right up there with The Backrooms as one of YouTube’s biggest analog horror series with over 100 million views between its original episodes alone. It’s become one of the subgenre’s most formative entries, alongside Parsons’ viral hit and other gems like Local 58 and Gemini Home Entertainment that created scares by evoking old local television broadcasts and educational programs. Audiences showed some willingness to embrace analog horror back in 2023 with the release of Kyle Edward Ball‘s experimental Skinamarink, but now, it seems poised to have its breakthrough moment in Hollywood in the scramble to find the next big hit. That Spielberg is leading the charge isn’t necessarily surprising considering his rave review of Obsession and his general excitement for what YouTube’s indie filmmakers are accomplishing on comparatively miniscule budgets.
There is no release date for the Mandela Catalogue film adaptation. In the meantime, all episodes and shorts of the original series are available to watch for free on Kister’s YouTube channel. Stay tuned here at Collider for further updates as the project comes together.
