NASHVILLE — When Screamify confirmed this week that it will sponsor the Nashville Horror Film Festival for a second consecutive year, the announcement read less like patronage and more like a business model coming into focus. The festival's third edition runs October 2–4, 2026 at Regal Green Hills, opening with the Screamify VIP Party on Friday night — and the streamer's first year as sponsor has already produced two titles for its platform.
The case study is Trent Duncan. At the 2025 festival, Duncan's feature Axes and Os won both Best Overall Feature and Best Director. Screamify licensed the film, which is now streaming on the platform, and subsequently greenlit Game Night: Survive the Slasher, a 32-episode series in the company's short-form Micro Horrors format, written and directed by Duncan. The series premiered July 11, 2026, with a red-carpet event at Sidecar Bar in Nashville. For a regional festival in its third year, converting a competition winner into a licensed feature and an original series inside twelve months is a notable proof of concept: the festival functions as an acquisitions scout for its sponsor, and the sponsorship gives filmmakers a visible path from laurels to distribution.
The festival itself was founded in 2024 by filmmakers Wolf Turner and Chuckie Fuoco, who describe the project in terms of a structural gap. “We're both filmmakers ourselves. And we saw, I mean, because we love horror, we saw that Nashville didn't have a horror film festival. And so to see that pocket and to fill it has been amazing,” Fuoco said in an interview recorded at the July 11 premiere and published in the festival's press kit.
Growth has followed. “We have probably tripled the submissions that we had last year, and so it's going to be a deep dive into these films,” Fuoco said. Turner, assessing the field, put it plainly: “I feel like every year, everyone just steps it up. … The gore, the love, the horror, the effects. It's unbelievable.”
The economics of regional festivals are rarely generous, and sponsor relationships tend to be transactional signage. What Nashville is testing is something closer to a farm system — a fixed October date (submissions remain open via FilmFreeway), a streamer with a demonstrated willingness to license and commission, and a founding team still framing the enterprise around community rather than market. Both Axes and Os and Game Night: Survive the Slasher are streaming on Screamify; the 2026 program will show whether the pipeline can produce a third.
Photography: Jeremy Harris / Screamify images; interview still: Screamify / Pillarbox Media.
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