Misc
Calling all Kaiju Lovers of the Northeast!
Something colossal is coming to Brooklyn for another year of monster mayhem!
Community might be the best thing to come out of fandom, and when it comes to Kaiju, I know exactly where to find your fix. Kaiju Brooklyn is a new grassroots convention that celebrates everything in the realm of Japanese monsters, the art, and the mayhem. With only a single year under its belt, Kaiju Brooklyn has already proved to be 100% for us, and 100% by us.
The convention has a stacked lineup of programming across Industry City, including panel discussions with kaiju filmmakers, veteran toy collectors, seasoned artists, and dedicated creators like Aaimz Tako and RX Superstar. You’ll definitely find me listening in on A Tale of Two Godzillas with filmmaker Yoko Higuchi and FX artist Will Caban as they discuss their time working on Shin Godzilla (my personal favorite).
But that’s not all. The celebration creates a safe space for Kaiju culture with outdoor screenings, and by highlighting cosplayers, local artists, and “the backbone of the Kaiju fandom”, the Japanese toys and collectibles are well worth wasting your atomic breath on.
A Quick Interview With Kaiju Brooklyn Founder John Belotti Jr.
I got the opportunity to speak with John Belotti Jr, also known as Robo7 Art, who founded Kaiju Brooklyn, a staple of the northeast Kaiju community.
Xero Gravity: What is your personal Kaiju origin story? What introduced you to the genre?
John Belotti Jr: I’ve been watching Kaiju and Kung-fu movies since I was a kid when they used to come on TV every weekend. I was the only kid in my class watching Asian sci-fi and action films while my friends were watching Star Wars stuff. So, I’ve been indoctrinated with this stuff forever! Like every kid, I grew up loving dinosaurs, and lo and behold, on TV were giant dinosaur-like monsters fighting and destroying cities!
XG: How did the inception of Kaiju Brooklyn come about?
JB: I’ve been doing Kaiju fan art since 2015. Since then, I’ve sold my prints of my art at conventions all across the country. Two years ago, my friend Seismic Toys and I set up tables at The Japan Society where we were able to sell my artwork along with his toys before a screening of the original Mothra movie. We had such great success that we felt there was a ripe market for some sort of Kaiju themed event, but we just didn’t know where to do it.
I got the license to make Ultraman T-shirts with my artwork that same year, and because of the timing, I missed all the big conventions around NYC. I got excited because I really wanted to sell these shirts but I had no local venue to do so. I approached Japan Village in Industry City about doing something on the second floor, maybe setting up a table on a weekend and just selling my shirts, but it went nowhere. This is when the stars aligned for me. Around June 2023, a friend of mine who works at Industry City mentioned that a friend of his opened up a theater space just a month earlier next to St Mark’s Comics and was looking to do events there. I went over to meet Anthony of bkONE Productions and pitched him the idea of collaborating on a Kaiju themed convention. He immediately wanted to work with me, which was kind of amazing!
I would also like to preface this with another event that shaped the creation of the show; I work on movies and TV in New York. When the writers and actors went on strike last summer, I was left with a huge amount of time to get this thing off the ground. So as you can see, there were a whole lot of different events coalescing in my life at the same time!
XG: Kaiju Brooklyn has grown exponentially in only its second year. After a killer year 1, in what ways were you able to expand for year 2?
JB: We were so blown away by the reception for the first show that we knew we had to do it again. We were highly aware of the original show’s shortcomings: lack of panels, proper cosplay contest, and more. We only had two months to prepare for the first show, so we had no time to do much else. This time we gave ourselves six months to prepare and incorporate all the ideas we had for the original show, including panels inside the different bars and venues around Industry City as well as an art gallery for myself! We’re also doing a pretty big cosplay contest sponsored by St. Marks Comics!
On top of that, we have so many wonderful collaborators this year aside from who I mentioned, including Tsuburaya Productions, which owns the Ultraman characters, and Mill Creek Entertainment who have brought all the Ultraman media to fans in the West. We are doing an Ultraman themed VIP party the night before the con at Brooklyn Kura sake distillery with a DJ, a special Ultraman panel from the good people at Ultraman Connection and a screening of the first Ultraman Belial and Zero movie!
XG: Please brag a little bit. What are you most proud to have accomplished with the Kaiju Brooklyn group? Is there anything you are looking forward to in the years to come?
JB: I was 100% confident that the first show would be a success. I’m so proud that my instincts were correct. People thanked me for creating this event and bringing a taste of Kaiju into their backyard. That was incredibly surreal to hear from random people as well as friends. On top of all this, all of the vendors and artists did incredibly well- that really brought it home for me.
In the years to come, I’m looking forward to continuing to build a good support team because I want the show to get bigger, but I can’t do it alone. Right now we are slowly building that with some really good people who want to see us grow. My goal is to move the show to a two- and possibly three-day event in a larger space with multiple screenings and panels. I also want to have an Ultraman stage performance show at our event as well as exclusive toys and merchandise.
XG: Over at Horror Press, we’re running with “Monster MAYhem” as our theme for the rest of the month. Give the people some homework! Can you recommend a piece of Kaiju media that the fandom should have crossed off their lists?
JB: Sure! The OG film that started it all: Gojira. Also, Mothra vs Godzilla, Monster Zero, Godzilla 85, GMK, the 90’s Gamera movies and for sure Godzilla Minus One! For Ultraman, the original show, Ultraseven, Ultraman Tiga, Gaia, Max, Nexus, Zett and Blazar.
If You’re in the Area Get Your Tickets to Kaiju Brooklyn Now!
Kaiju Brooklyn 2 takes place from the evening of May 31st to June 1st at the Tom Kane Theater in Industry City. The celebration is sure to be an event with a spirit much larger than any naturally occurring threat to your city. Tickets start at $25 and are available now! For the Kaiju family outside of the northeast- stay tuned to Horror Press on social media for on site convention coverage.
Misc
Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!
Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!
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What You’ll Win
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
- Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
- Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
- Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
- The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
- Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
- Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
- Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
- Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
- Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
- Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
- Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Cast and crew interviews
- Theatrical trailers and TV spots
- Concept art galleries
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever.
From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025!
Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights
Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength
Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons.
During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear.
I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!
You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.
Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet
Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.
I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film.
Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band
My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to.
“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”
“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.”
That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)
Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy.
Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business
If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.
“Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.”
In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.
Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”
Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.
Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment
Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make.
Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house…
Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature!

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun
NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long.
At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.
I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life.
That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more.





