Each year, Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights pushes the limit on what a seasonal after-hours event can be. For Mike Aiello, creative director of HHN for Universal Orlando Resort, this year is about ramping up the scares across the park, while also introducing new event experiences like roving zombie carhops and a DJ dance area.
“There’s always something for everybody at the event, but I think it’s most true this year with the diversity of content, from the IP and original house ideas, and the connective tissue, which is our Scare Zone program,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This year has evolved into something I think everyone’s going to like as a creative entity.”
Lora Sauls, assistant director of creative development and entertainment for UOR, says, “We’re filling in all those locations that had a moment to breathe, to bring a lot more characters, a lot more haunting, effects and lighting to the entire park. The Cat Lady of Cricket Lane scare zone? You’re going through Central Park. We got to expand that scare zone beyond the trees and into the circle, so you’re going to see the cat lady’s house, some cat beds and get some more scares in there. It’s a house moment in the streets.”
Alongside a bar themed to rock icon Slash and vinyl featuring original HHN tracks, for John Murdy, creative director for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, one of this year’s big creative needle movers is Five Nights at Freddy’s full-scale animatronics. “If you had come to me five, 10 years ago and asked if we could do a house on Five Nights at Freddy’s?’ I probably would have said it’s impossible,” says Murdy. There’s also WWE Presents: The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks, “a good example thematically of how we’re pushing the boundaries of what can be horror.”
“Our fans have been asking for some of these properties for years, so this year we really wanted to go, ‘Let’s give it to them. Let’s straight up curate this year with what our fans’ greatest desires,’” Murdy explains.
In a first interview discussing their larger lineup for this year’s bicoastal event, Murdy, Aiello and Sauls share a number of new details about what attendees of both the Hollywood and Orlando parks can expect out of their respective and shared IP houses, original houses and more.
The first house announced as part of this year’s event involved working closely with the Fallout team and Amazon’s Prime Video. The teams were provided asset access to recreate the TV series’ universe, including full turnarounds and 3D models of The Ghoul (the character played by Walton Goggins) and his face so the even’s masks are identical to the look in the show. There was also a teaser created specifically to aid the house’s creation that “filmed one of their characters for us to tease their second season in the house,” says Sauls.
Within the house experience, Aiello notes that it will be different from one of 2023’s most popular houses, The Last of Us, in that structurally, the experience will take on a montage feel “where there’s an order of events to the house, but we’re using time as the connective tissues, jumping to places so we’re able to deliver the variety of environments the series and game possess.”
The experience on both coasts will be appearance-heavy, primarily through Lucy (Ella Purnell’s character) and her journey. Still expect to see The Ghoul and Maximus (Aaron Moten’s character), but also as Aiello and Saul note, the radroaches, T-60s and raiders — all set to the franchise’s 1950s-inspired soundtrack. Orlando’s team hypes traveling to Philadelphia and a battle between The Ghoul and life-size T-60s. For the Hollywood house, Murdy says eventgoers will get to experience stepping out into the wasteland with a “big cyclorama to make it feel endless all around you and convey that post-apocalyptic horror.” Fans can also navigate the Ghoul’s graveyard and Ghoul-infested Super Duper Mart, alongside an encounter with an irradiated bear, “one of the biggest creatures we’ve ever built — with the clay alone on it, the sculpt weighs over 500 pounds.”
Conceptualization on the house began ahead of Terrifier 3’s release, and will feature an onslaught to your senses that not only includes a litany of smells (bad and good), but extensive effects that evoke the feeling of being “showered” in a “symphony of blood,” both teams tease. “There’s probably more of those types of effects created for this house than we’ve ever done before,” says Murdy. It’s so intense, Sauls notes that Orlando eventgoers should not only prepare but also consider taking the second ending to the house if they want to avoid getting wet. “Our drip lines that we have above your head in houses are typically about 10 to 20 percent. They’re opening those up to 100 percent. There’s two of them over your head, there’s a water blast coming at you from the side, and it’s all doused in red light,” she says.
All that blood spatter will be in tribute to Art the Clown, who Murdy notes “has invited us into this Funhouse to view his works of art” in a narrative that is not a greatest hits of Terrifier but a single setting with a narrative. So in addition to the expected Funhouse locations, fans will traverse the Clown Cafe food court and Art’s bathroom for a sequence that’s “worse than it is in the movie,” Murdy warns, along with a moment that embodies “Halloween’s revenge on Christmas” and a tunnel of love, with Sauls teasing a “gory” and “disgusting” environment featuring decapitated swan boats. Murdy notes that eventgoers can look up amid all that terror to find that Art has given his scenes “fun names like silly saws and naughty potty made on little signs out of blood.” And within those scenes, the house will feature Art’s best kills from across all three films, “sometimes twisted in an even more disgusting way,” notes Saul, but also “some new, fresh kills that are in line” with the new horror icon’s style.
Five Nights at Freddy’s House
In 2023, Hollywood’s “Blumhouse: Behind the Screams” showcase highlighted Five Nights at Freddy’s eight-foot-tall animatronics, a moment for Murdy that led to a decision: “the only possible way to do this is with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.” Both the Orlando and Hollywood teams connected and brainstormed on their ideas before bringing their blueprint to Henson, who helped affirm what was possible. Then, Murdy notes, they “divided and conquered” with Hollywood taking the lead on creating “the most complicated animatronic figure that we’ve ever done” for [Halloween Horror Nights].
While the animatronics are impressive, Sauls explains that guests will see these characters in a variety of ways, with some “fully animatronic, some that are puppeteered, and some that will move in a way that you think they’re costumes.” Adds Aiello, “The Blumhouse film team and Five Nights at Freddy’s filmmaker were building those costumes and their setups to get a shot. For our application, it’s about how we create something that can sustain the amount of time it is in front of our guests and the length of time that our event is open.”
Within the house, Murdy teases HHN-goers will “see a fully animated Freddy Fazbear performing like he would in the movie or the video game,” in a space that mirrors “the textures, tones, the carpet, the pizzeria booths” of the film, according to Sauls. In addition to the dilapidated showroom, she teases walking through the pizzeria’s kitchen, janitor’s closet, and security room where there’s “a complete one-for-one replica.”
While much of the focus is on the house’s advanced tech, Murdy notes they haven’t forgotten the human element essential to delivering the jump scares with a little more gore. “It’s also in the films, but it’s the kids who live inside the animatronics. So there is a thread going on in the house of the ghost kids showing up, and there are all those guys who broke into trash the place. You get quick shots in the film of Carl when his face has been ripped off by that horrible torture chair, but I wanted to know what happened to all of them and to bring that level of scare to the experience as well.”
WWE Presents: The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks House
A collaboration led by Orlando’s Aiello, the idea was conceived “the Wyatt six debuted, and their entrance was them wreaking havoc and destroying environments unique to the backstage of a WWE live show,” recalls Aiello. “It looked like one of our haunted houses on live television, so I placed a call as soon as RAW ended.” After reaching out to Marty Miller, senior vice president and director of WWE TV, the parks’ teams came together with WWE Director of Character Development Rob Fee, for what Aiello teases as “a haunted house experience that recreates the entrance as if you’re walking in the footsteps of the cameraman.”
In Orlando, you’ll venture through the derelict and abandoned Firefly Funhouse featuring remnants of The Fiend’s influence, before being surrounded by “imagery of WWE media taken over by Uncle Howdy before you dive into the minds of the Wyatt six.” Scary monsters and characters are promised in various environments, such as Abby’s witch hut, where “she can crawl all around you,” teases Sauls. Human victims are pecked and consumed in Huskus the Pig Boy and Mercy the Buzzard’s realms, alongside Rambling Rabbit’s spiraling tea-party-inspired dimension, where their mouths are sewn shut. That’s along with new characters unique to the house, and a ton of easter eggs for WWE fans within environments that “live and breathe the same level of textures that exist in the ring,” says Aiello.
In Hollywood, Murdy’s take is partly inspired by seeing the wrestlers of the early ’70s live, mingled with the creative universe and cinematic storytelling approach of Bray. Fans are greeted by Uncle Howdy at the Wyatt compound, “this Bayou in the middle of a swamp,” and “an environment I’ve never done at Horror Nights with fireflies” that will feature music as part of the entry. Throughout the house, there will be inspirations, set pieces, or more tied to Bray’s rocking chair, the cave Uncle Howdy said he brought the Wyatt Sicks from, the Uncle Howdy sessions, and Bray’s lantern. “We use that whole idea of follow the lantern and follow the light of the fireflies to take you into this supernatural realm of the Wyatt six,” says Murdy. “In every scene you’re going to see that lantern and it keeps showing up in different ways, in different locations.”
Jason Universe
Both Hollywood and Orlando have partnered with Horror Inc. and the Thirteen Hole group for houses that use distinctive storytelling treatments for Friday the 13th’s 40th anniversary. Hollywood’s storyline is partly inspired by tourists who flock to the real-life summer camp that served as the original film’s setting, alongside urban explorers — who visit abandoned and derelict locations — and dark tourists, who travel to places associated with death and tragedy. Guests will arrive in the present day, where they’ll join a group of content creators working with the fictional company Death Tours, who “made the terrible mistake of breaking into Camp Crystal Lake,” says Murdy. “They’re making videos, and you’re going to see snippets of their videos as you go along.” Drawing material from the first eight films, attendees will see iconic franchise locations like the shack in the woods, the cabins, the graveyard, and barn, alongside appearances from the young Jason who drowned, sackhead Jason, Jason in the hockey mask as well as the “sixth and seventh film’s version of that, where he’s just a rotting corpse with maggots,” says Murdy.
In Orlando, you’ll see similar locations, and it’s also set at the camp, but “we’re really playing off the new vision that the Jason Universe has for Jason, that version of the character Greg Nicotero designed,” says Aiello. That is the entire front half of the experience, which Aiello notes expands on the idea that Jason can be anywhere at any time. “He is relentless. We wanted this to be violent and unyielding, to be the idea that Jason Voorhees appears as a force that is unbelievable. As soon as he’s there, you’re around a corner, and there he is again.” It’s a very claustrophobic experience that exploits Jason’s size and scale as you’re moving through the house.
If the first half is intense, the second half will be brutal, Sauls and Aiello tease, noting that HHN-goers will walk through an oversized Jason hockey mask before they face down a gauntlet of Jasons from across eight films. “Imagine a quick, cut, living montage of every visage of Jason,” says Aiello. “I believe that back half is going to be some of the most intense scares we’ve had.”
Poltergeist and Blumhouse 15th Anniversary Terror Tram
As part of Hollywood’s 2025 event, Universal Studios Hollywood is bringing two experiences familiar to eventgoers. Anyone who attended either coast in 2018 will remember the Poltergeist house, based on the 1982 classic. This year, the West Coast event will revive it as part of a “blast from the past,” says Murdy. Fans can expect something very similar to the 2018 version, but in a “couple of places we went, ‘Let’s change this up,’ because you learn things when you do a house,” says the creative director while pointing to the original house’s kitchen sequence featuring “rotting meat crawling on the counter” but no actors. “We looked for the opportunity to increase the scare factor in different places like that.”
Also, back by popular demand, this year’s Terror Tram builds directly on the 2024 Blumhouse-themed experience. Unlike Poltergeist, this 15th anniversary celebration will offer a different slate of horrors, centering on past and upcoming titles. After hijacking the Universal park’s computing systems and security protocols, Megan will serve as the tram host, welcoming guests first into a living trailer for Black Phone 2, a winter nightmare featuring different iterations of the sequel’s verison of The Grabber, before attendees are transported into “The Further,” where “all the doors are red doors, and all of the different demons and ghosts from that franchise are going to be attacking,” Murdy teases.
The next section transforms key creative elements (including that black and red demon dimension theme) from 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer house into a walkable experience where you can now “run into the possessed girls and the demons.” The final leg will take fans through a black light-led Purge tribute featuring new characters created specifically for HHN Hollywood’s terror tram experience. And then it’s back to Megan, who will welcome guests into a real-life version of the Blumhouse, “as if Megan conjured it with AI,” says Murdy. Guests can expect Megan glam shots as they navigate all the night’s icons for “one final terrifying gauntlet.”