Halloween Horror Nights is consistently pushing expectations. However this newest effort will go away diehard followers much more Obsessed.
Earlier this month, the L.A. park’s HHN Artistic Director and government producer John Murdy dropped a shock announcement revealing the presence of Obsession’s Nikki as a part of the 2026 occasion. Now, Murdy is sharing extra particulars on what to anticipate at Common Locations & Experiences’ standard after-hours occasion for that look — one thing he says got here collectively “very late within the sport for us by way of our growth.”
Throughout that Aug. 8 panel, Murdy had teased the model of Nikki followers would see, noting it could be based mostly on her ultimate look within the Curry Barker movie, which is (spoiler alert!) a climactic sequence that options each a Nikki (Inde Navarrette) whose company and autonomy are corrupted by Bear’s (Michael Johnston) twisted want and the true younger lady trapped inside her personal physique on account of the curse. For the occasion, Murdy confirms followers will work together with the model of Nikki earlier than the “want” is undone.
On the time, Murdy described Nikki’s look as being like an interactive “The place’s Waldo?” permitting followers to have interaction with the character at varied factors all through the park. HHN followers shortly linked the expertise to the roaming Artwork the Clown as a part of the 2025 occasion’s Terrifier collaboration.
“It’s just like Artwork final 12 months, the place we created this factor to activate areas of the theme park you’ll by no means anticipate to see a performer in. That included our retail retailer,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve recognized numerous totally different areas the place she will seem. You by no means know the place you would possibly encounter her.”
In contrast to Artwork, who was carried out by a crew of “scare actors” for the primary time within the occasion’s historical past, Nikki shall be forged with conventional actors. Utilizing dialogue scripted by Murdy and pulled “straight from Curry’s” movie, these performers will even decide friends to have interaction with. “Usually, our scare actors don’t communicate,” Murdy explains. “Nevertheless it appeared actually essential to provide Nikki the genuine voice Curry gave her within the movie. So I took all the dialogue from the movie, and put collectively a artistic remedy that I despatched to Curry.”
If friends need to interact Nikki, they’ll want to take a look at USH’s social media, together with its Instagram Story the place a password shall be shared that can set off interactions with the performer. “It encourages our friends to search out Nikki, and if they offer her the password, they could get one thing,” he says.
That can embody the One Want Willow telephone quantity Bear calls to aim a modification of his want. “I really like the scene the place Bear tries to name the customer support division, and after I was studying concerning the making of the movie, I spotted that Curry did that voice,” he says. “I’ve requested him to document a particular message for our followers as if he have been the customer support rep from One Want Willow. So it’ll have a telephone quantity on it, they usually can name the quantity and get an unique message from Curry.”
As a part of the park’s customary protocols with day and night time characters, Nikki could have a manufacturing assistant working as her handler whereas she strikes about, making certain the protection of the performers and friends. Murdy has additionally used a few of the film’s traces in ways in which permit the character and performer to regulate interactions with attendees. “Curry’s dialogue can be utilized to have interaction or disengage a visitor,” Murdy says. “She has so many nice traces like, ‘No, no, no, no’ from that dinner sequence, or she will say, ‘I believed we have been having a pleasant time,’ and simply flip and go away.”
HHN Hollywood’s artistic director says this last-minute occasion addition was initially impressed by a fan who despatched him “a video of an interview that Curry did about how the Halloween season was coming, and the way Nikki can be the No. 1 costume.”
The dialog between Barker and the journalist would ultimately gravitate to Halloween Horror Nights, whose mazes for a lot of horror TV creators and filmmakers have change into badges of honor, and markers of pop cultural relevance. So when Barker revealed he goes yearly, Murdy thought, “We’ve acquired to do one thing.” After ringing Focus Options, they arrange a name with Barker the place Murdy pitched an concept based mostly on one thing the breakout filmmaker had shared in that interview.
“He expressed a want to see her within the occasion this 12 months, and I mixed it with what we used to do with the password to create a brand new activation for our fanbase,” he says. “He was very a lot in favor of the concept, and that’s what we’re in the course of growing.”
Earlier this summer season, Navarrette, who was not too long ago introduced as a part of the forged for Marvel’s upcoming X-Males film following her breakout function in Obsession, additionally hoped to see Nikki at HHN. In that interview, the actress shared her want to return dressed because the character — one thing different actors, like Us star Lupita Nyong’o, have carried out as an official a part of the occasion.
When the occasion kicks off on Sept. 3, HHN aficionados will see how the Nikki expertise additionally harkens again to the 2011 collaboration for “Eli Roth’s Hostel: Looking Season” maze. “I used to be doing Hostel with Eli Roth, and Eli actually needed the ladies that lured the fellows into the ‘artwork present’ — which is only a torture chamber in Hostel — as a part of the home. I’m like, ‘Nicely, they actually need one thing to do, one thing interactive with the friends.’ Eli stored every thing from Hostel, so he had all of the enterprise playing cards for Elite Looking, which was the key society within the movie.”
To generate the interactive parts, Murdy devised the password system, sharing it over X (then Twitter). “It was this Easter-eggy underground factor for the true huge followers,” he tells THR. “I simply began tweeting passwords each night time and saying, ‘For those who give the password to the ladies in entrance of Hostel, you possibly can get one thing in trade.’”
He would do it once more in varied types over time as a part of collaborations tied to IP like Ghostbusters and Insidious. Whereas he shelved it a number of years in the past, keen occasion followers have incessantly questioned when it could come again. The growing expertise is an element of a bigger effort by HHN to remain on the quickly increasing — and evolving — pulse of what’s taking place in horror. And proper now, says Murdy, what’s taking place is a 24-year-old filmmaker who simply turned his $750,000 price range indie movie right into a record-breaking field workplace hit.
“It’s like New Hollywood within the late ’60s into the early ’70s, however now it’s the YouTube children getting into the sector,” Murdy says, whereas discussing the re-rise of horror the after-hours occasion has been capable of capitalize on during the last decade. “I feel it began with Get Out. That was the primary second the place everyone was like, ‘Whoa.’ Sinners falls into that huge time, however then there’s the double whammy of Obsession and Backrooms, which really feel [tonally] totally different from Sinners and Get Out.”
For Murdy, tapping into the nuances, shifts, and developments throughout the style is a part of how the bicoastal occasion continues to broaden and keep recent. Alongside Nikki, HHN 2026 will function the Evil Useless Burn home, which can embody an animatronic speaking head for the primary time. Contained in the “Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness” maze — a tribute home to the late rocker’s life and discography — followers will expertise a “Loopy Practice” and big bat that bites the top off the Black Sabbath frontman.
The Hellraiser queue will function an enormous puzzle field “like a pastiche portray with all of the totally different ranges of hell” and a middle circle that “disappears whilst you’re ready in line and electrifies, earlier than you see Pinhead in a circle doing traces from the movie,” in response to Murdy. And for the primary time, the Sinners home is popping to Water World stunt performers for a floating air stunt, which can use a flying rig to drop the Irish vampire Remick in lengthy sufficient to hover as he delivers his now iconic “Sammie” line.
Nikki, then, is simply the newest means Halloween Horror Nights — additionally kicking off its thirty fifth anniversary at Common Orlando Resort in Florida on Aug. 28 — is “at all times pushing to see the place we will take the model subsequent,” says Murdy.
