EXCLUSIVE: Rising Canadian genre filmmaker Kurtis David Harder has come aboard to direct FOMO, a new horror thriller for the indie label Badlands.
Billed as Midsommar meets Squid Game, FOMO follows a party trip to the Greek islands that turns sinister when a group of friends realize they’ve become unwilling participants in an ancient ritual with life-or-death stakes. Survive a series of hedonistic trials and be rewarded with an endless lifetime of pleasure; fail, and be offered as a sacrifice to the gods. The party only ends when the last man is standing…
The project hails from writer Yalun Tu, creator and executive producer of Hulu’s upcoming limited series The Season, who also co-created Amazon Japan’s My Undead Yokai Girlfriend, with additional writing credits including NCIS: Hawaii and Wu Assassins.
Harder is best known for directing the acclaimed Shudder horror thriller Influencer, as well as its sequel Influencers, which premiered at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival and is slated to hit Shudder on December 12. Following a social-media influencer who finds herself in a nightmare scenario in Thailand, Influencer placed on lists of the best horror films of 2023 from Variety, Slash and Rotten Tomatoes.
We were first to report on the 2024 launch of Badlands, the indie genre label founded by longtime Sony exec Scott Strauss alongside Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee’s Thunder Road. Earlier this year, the company acquired Jayson Rothwell’s pitch for creature feature Lions, Tigers, and Bears, as well as the environmental thriller spec Hivemind from Peter Gaffney. Backed by Andrew Schwartzberg and Jon Shiffman’s Renegade Capital, the label recently began production on director Hong Won-Ki’s Perfect Girl and has Ángel Gómez Hernández’s Arachnid and Dangerous Games in post.
Harder is repped by Adam Goldworm at Aperture and Ashley Silver at Brecheen Feldman. Tu is repped by Circle Management + Production and Gersh.
