The subterranean creature film from Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Paramount Primal lands an August 2027 release just as Savage's Other Mommy struggles with reviews in theatres.
LaKeith Stanfield and Ben Mendelsohn are set to lead Molepeople, a subterranean horror film from Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Paramount Primal, according to The Hollywood Reporter, as relayed by JoBlo.com. Rob Savage, fresh off directing Other Mommy, will take the chair. Nathan Elston wrote the script.
The story follows a man who climbs down into the abandoned tunnels under New York City and runs into a society that has been living there, twisted by years underground. Savage, speaking at New York Comic-Con, pitched the tone as somewhere between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. That's a specific promise for a horror fan to hold a filmmaker to.
Paramount will handle worldwide distribution once Molepeople is finished, with the studio co-financing alongside Blumhouse Atomic Monster. Jason Blum produces, along with Paramount Primal's J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules and producer James Harris. Ryan Turek, Tracy Rosenblum, Elston and Savage are attached as executive producers. Cameras are expected to roll in the U.K. Toward the end of November or in early December, which puts this on a fairly tight clock for an August 27, 2027 release that's already locked in.
A rough week to announce a new horror movie
The timing is a little awkward for Savage. Other Mommy, his film starring Jessica Chastain as a mother fighting a supernatural entity wearing her daughter's face, is in theatres right now and getting hammered by critics. JoBlo's own review called it little more than jump scares propped up by Chastain's effort, and argued the film leans on a loud marketing push instead of actually being good.
That's a reversal from where things stood a few months ago. The teaser for Other Mommy, attached to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, reportedly had audiences genuinely rattled, and expectations built fast off that alone. Once the full film arrived, per JoBlo's account, that goodwill evaporated.
None of that seems to have slowed Molepeople down. Stanfield and Mendelsohn are both actors who tend to elevate whatever genre material they're handed, Stanfield off the back of strong, strange performances across his career and Mendelsohn with a long run of menacing supporting turns. Pairing them under a director still chasing his first unambiguous horror hit is an interesting bet for Blumhouse to make this quickly.
Whether Molepeople ends up closer to the grimy, confident horror Savage is reaching for or repeats the Other Mommy pattern of a strong pitch undercut by execution is the real question here. With production starting within weeks and a 2027 date already on the calendar, there isn't much time left for Blumhouse to figure that out before cameras roll.
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