Paramount Pictures has renewed a multiyear deal with filmmaker Walter Hamada and his company 18Hz Productions to produce a slate of horror films, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Formerly the head of DC Films at Warner Bros. and producer of films such as The Conjuring, It, and Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Hamada left the company in 2022, signing a contract with Paramount later that same year. Now, with a renewal of this agreement, Hamada will continue to produce horror movies with low- to mid-size budgets for theatrical and streaming for the studio.

First on the slate will be Primate, directed by Johannes Roberts and starring Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, and Troy Kotsur, which follows a group of friends who try to survive a tropical vacation gone wrong when their pet chimpanzee becomes homicidal. Scheduled to open on January 9, 2026, the film recently premiered at Fantastic Fest, with the first trailer releasing online.

Other projects currently in the works include an untitled horror film directed by André Øvredal and starring Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, and Melissa Leo, Familiar, directed by Caye Casas, and Suffer Little Children, written and directed by Rodrigue Huart, which will be a reimagining of the 1976 cult Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child? Directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador and based on a novel by Juan José Plans, El Juego de los Niños, Who Can Kill A Child? follows a couple who travel to a remote island for vacation. only to realize that all the adults there have been killed.