How Verve Became Hollywood's Go-To Agency for Horror Hits

Verve's horror business grew revenue nearly 20% for a second consecutive year, the agency's co-founders say, as the boutique talent firm stacked up deals in 2026 that its three-letter rivals couldn't match. The number comes straight from co-founders Adam Levine and Bryan Besser, who disclose that transactions covering writing, producing, directing and acting clients drove the jump.

The timing matters. This summer, when box office grosses rolled in from Curry Barker's "Obsession" and Kane Parsons' "Backrooms," social media predicted Hollywood would raid Reddit threads and low-budget YouTube channels for the next digital creator turned auteur. Major studios greenlit genre projects based on internet lore in rapid succession. At Verve, leadership just laughed.

"We joke about it sometimes, how novel it became to activate fan bases and appreciate good, artistic horror this year," says David Boxerbaum, a partner and motion picture lit agent at Verve. "But for us, it's always been cool. It's always been an area of specialization and really intense focus for our business."

What's actually in the portfolio?

The biggest trophy was the heated auction for film and TV adaptive licenses to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise. Representing the rights holders, Verve fielded offers from 101 Studios, Amazon MGM, Blumhouse, Neon, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Universal. Indie studio A24 beat them all, attaching Barker to direct a film and Glen Powell to produce a TV series inspired by the serial killer Leatherface.

The roster runs deeper than one auction:

• Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, who shot to fame in 2025 co-directing "Final Destination: Bloodlines" — a $50 million revival for New Line that grossed almost $320 million worldwide — now have 12 development projects set up across town, including "Gremlins 3" at Warner Bros. and "Metal Gear Solid" at Sony, where the pair hold a first-look deal.
• Trevor Henderson, a Canadian illustrator and world-builder, was one of the first creatives to benefit from the "Backrooms" boom. His digital-first horror story "Siren Head" sold to Warner Bros. in July as a feature to be co-written by "Weapons" mastermind Zach Cregger.
• Matthew Lillard, the "Scream" favorite, got a career reboot from talent agent Josh Rahm via the "Five Nights at Freddy's" franchise and Mike Flanagan's hit Amazon series reboot of "Carrie."
• Guy Busick penned "Scream 7," the highest-earning film in that franchise, plus Searchlight's "Ready or Not 2: Here I Come."
• Scott Glassgold, with Boxerbaum's help, established 12:01 Films, a company dedicated to creator content and a leader in the market for short stories adaptable to film and TV. It even runs a specialty imprint at Simon & Schuster.

What does this change for the talent market?

The mechanism, according to the agency, is a simple inversion of the old star system. "An ongoing theme for years in the horror business is that these projects are concept driven, not star driven," says agent Michael Bitar, formerly head of development at Sony's Screen Gems. "These filmmakers are becoming the stars more so than the faces in front of the camera."

That shifts leverage toward directors and creators with built-in fan bases — and toward the agency that signed them before the majors noticed. Verve's agents say they also invest heavily in growing alongside their multi-hyphenate clients, who they argue aren't just genre stars but versatile storytellers capable of working in any quadrant. The firm holds a similar foothold in animation.

The defensive logic is blunt: corporate agencies promise crossover abundance, and disloyalty, as the firm puts it, is an agent's true horror story. After two years of near-20% growth built on scares, expect the big agencies to keep trying to poach the very creators Verve bet on first.