aTwist Lines Up Four October Microdramas With Lopez, Hilton, Ferguson

Microdrama platform and studio aTwist will release four original series across October under the banner "To Die For," the company announced, with Mario Lopez, Paris Hilton and Jesse Tyler Ferguson attached in starring, producing and directing roles.

The slate opens on Oct. 8 with "Honey, I Think Our House Is Haunted," a comedy starring Mario Lopez alongside his wife Courtney Lopez and their children. In the logline the studio issued, Lopez plays Milo, who inherits his grandmother's "haunted" house and moves his reluctant family in for the summer, only for eerie disturbances to convince them "she may have been right all along."

What is aTwist?

aTwist launched on Sept. 3 with a roster of original microdramas across scripted, unscripted and animation, alongside a slate of curated library content. The platform is founded by entertainment industry veterans Jana Winograde, Susan Rovner and Lloyd Braun. Microdramas, a vertical short-form video format whose episodes typically run between one and three minutes, have become a focal growth area for U.S. and Chinese streaming services.

Ferguson, the "Modern Family" alum, will direct and produce the musical comedy "Theater Kids vs. Zombies," premiering Oct. 15. His husband Justin Mikita produces alongside choreographer Jamal Sims and Grammy Award-winning songwriter and producer Shane McAnally. The studio's logline sends a group of scrappy theater students into an apocalypse: "with humanity hanging in the balance, the students must sing, dance and fight their way through the apocalypse — because for the zombies to go, they must put on a show."

What else lands on Oct. 15?

Also premiering that day is "Scandalous Bloodline Lies," a family drama produced by Kevin Hart's Hartbeat. The series turns on a 20-year-old affair and unconfirmed pregnancy: when the resulting son begins dating the former lover's daughter, the two parents mount a cover-up that threatens both families.

Who closes the slate?

Paris Hilton voices a killer doll in the horror comedy "Unboxing the Killer Doll," which debuts Oct. 22 and lists Hilton as a producer through her 11:11 media company. The premise follows a homeschooled teen who becomes a social-media "unboxer" on the dare of mean girls; the doll they send her, voiced by Hilton, begins killing them off and possessing her.

aTwist's October calendar at a glance

• Oct. 8 — "Honey, I Think Our House Is Haunted" (Comedy)
• Oct. 15 — "Theater Kids vs. Zombies" (Musical Comedy)
• Oct. 15 — "Scandalous Bloodline Lies" (Family Drama)
• Oct. 22 — "Unboxing the Killer Doll" (Horror Comedy)

The pairing of a microdrama distributor with broadcast-era names signals the format's continued bid for mainstream recognition. aTwist's founders, who previously ran development at ABC, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Television, are testing whether marquee casting can translate the genre's mobile-first cadence to a wider American audience.