Horrors Untold is a book devoted to Universal Orlando Resort’s Halloween Horrors Nights – its history, its lore, its evolution and expansion. One of the most interesting aspects of this, and one of the most fun chapters to work on, is the intellectual properties that the event not only relies on each and every year to help draw in ever-larger crowds, but the particularly impactful ones that helped shape the contours of the proceedings themselves over time – how, say, Stranger Things helped elevate the themed food-and-beverage game back in 2018, with Universal never looking back since.

It’s a surprisingly meaty topic (no pun intended, given that example), and it’s one that has served as something of a lightning rod when it comes to feedback and criticism (constructive and otherwise) from the fandom over the years – particularly within the past decade-and-a-half, when the “age of the IP” came to dominate Horror Nights, largely kicking the “era of the icons” to the theming curb.

Thankfully, to help wade us through all these different perspectives and considerations – and, just maybe, conclusions – we have a host of highly educated, highly passionate HHN maestros assembled. Please welcome to the Horrors Untold roundtable:

• Jonathan Berrier – co-host of the HHN 365 podcast and admin of the Horror Fam Discord server
• Drew Marchese – long-running personality in the theme-park community
• Nick Parabicoli – co-host of the Fear and Beer podcast
• Kenneth Leeming – guitarist for Pangolin and co-host of the Rush of Fear and DreamJerks podcasts

Marc N. Kleinhenz, creative lead of Horrors Untold:

In Horrors Untold, we sketch out the six most important and/or influential intellectual properties we think HHN Orlando ever featured, the franchises that helped fuel its growth and, as such, made it into the absolutely mammoth event it is today:

1. The Walking Dead
2. Halloween
3. American Horror Story
4. Stranger Things
5. Universal Monsters
6. Chucky

I’d like to ask if you agree with this list, but, more importantly, there’s also this consideration: is the time for IPs over (at least, in their current, dominant state)? Has Universal leveraged them enough to attain a large-enough crowd size, or do you think there’s still room for the likes of, say, Walking Dead and Stranger Things to marshall all the scare zones or most of the food booths for a given year? Since the original houses tend to be scarier – and more successful with the ravenous fanbase – should the company go back to the days when only one or two of the slots are filled by these commercial tie-ins, or does the fact that the event now requires ten haunts each and every year mean we’re always destined to see roughly forty or fifty percent of the roster be filled up in this way?

(There’s actually so much more we could discuss here: should Universal trend towards smaller, more niche IPs now? Should they continue to reuse the returning heavyhitters, but do so in all-new ways, like we saw with Texas Chainsaw Massacre over at Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood last year? Feel free to grab the [horror] ball and run with it.)

Drew Marchese, HHN fiend:

When I think of the evolution of Halloween Horror Nights, the property that jumps out to me as being the most influential in the event’s history has to be Stranger Things.

Stranger Things is a super unique phenomenon. Its popularity spans generations. Hard to find something that appeals to such a wide audience globally and across so many ages. The original house was an absolute triumph in IP design – a temporary attraction that truly felt like something that was built for the long haul… and at the time, it featured the then-unheard of availability during daytime operations for Stranger Things Day shortly after the event’s run.

Since its debut at the event, we have seen HHN take risks on their properties more and more. IPs that hardcore fans have longed for but Art & Design [the team behind Horror Nights] has stayed away from. I truly believe that we have seen things like Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice fueled from the nostalgia that Stranger Things brings an older generation, and younger people who are now looking into more ‘80s entertainment off the heels of the show.

Then you have properties like The Weeknd. When you look at the global reach of the event now, you have to find more well-known properties to showcase, and The Weeknd is a powerhouse name in the music industry and brought in an incredible amount of people who may not have attended the event before to experience it.

Stranger Things has really opened the door to all kinds of unique risks that they can take – and, as such, it feels like Halloween Horror Nights has become the brand that sells, not the properties within it. I would argue the IPs featured in 2024 were some of the weakest in the past few years, and yet the event was as crowded as ever. If you would have asked me 10 years ago if Hot Topic in the local mall would have Halloween Horror Nights-branded items, I would have laughed at you… but now there is exclusive merch at Hot Topic and, even, on Amazon! It’s surreal.

Marc N. Kleinhenz, creative lead of Horrors Untold:

Yeah, that last one is a really good point, and I would definitely add a year-round experience in Las Vegas to that list, too.

Now, whether any of these individuals who venture into Hot Topic or Sin City would be motivated to buy a, say, Jack the Clown shirt remains to be seen – and will probably be really determinative of the event’s fate over the course of the next decade.

Kenneth Leeming, musician:

I’m curious, Marc, as to the reasoning for including Chucky on the list of influential IPs. If my memory and knowledge of the event serves me, Chucky has only been featured in a significant way three times: houses in 2009 and 2023 and a scare zone in 2018. His inclusion on merchandise as a staple of HHN has always baffled me. I have nothing against Chucky as a character or IP, but his importance to the event’s history has always felt overstated to me.

I would be more inclined to highlight the trio of Freddy, Jason, and Learherface that were featured in 2007 as a big step in establishing HHN as a place to see iconic horror films come to life. The event was still relatively small then, especially compared to now, but I believe that 2007 lineup must have started the ball rolling that eventually led to the relationships that brought us The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and Stranger Things.

As for the balance between IP and originals, I feel like IPs should always be included in the lineup. Not necessarily for the purpose of attracting new guests (I think we’re good on crowds), but because Universal Studios is where you can ride the movies! Nobody else can bring movies and TV shows to life the way Universal does. It’s the main thing that sets HHN apart from any other major haunt. Six Flags has started to use IPs now, but Universal is still the park most people would trust to create an experience that feels authentic to what we’ve seen on screen.

Marc N. Kleinhenz, creative lead of Horrors Untold:

Y’know, to be perfectly honest with you, my co-author and I went back and forth a bit on the inclusion of Chucky (and some others on that finalized list), and we came down on the side we did for a couple of reasons, most notably the fact that he’s been around at the event, in one incarnation or to one degree or another, since Dungeon of Terror, the very first Horror Nights haunt, back in 1991. He’s perpetually hovering in the background, whether on merchandise (as you noted) or as, say, a “watch my TV show on Peacock!” stand, and his continual integration is, I think, one of the clearest manifestations of the impulse that lives behind so many of these IP inclusions: corporate synergy, in this case for NBCUniversal, specifically. I’d argue that justifies his presence on the most influential list, even if that influence is more on the margins than the clear domination of something like AMC’s The Walking Dead.

As for your hypothesis that HHN is, essentially, where you can experience the movies, I think that’s pretty spot-on – but it does lead me to ask once again: what property (or properties) would you most like to see Universal use next?

Kenneth Leeming, musician:

Oh, what IPs would I like to see?

I’d love to see the original Scream as a house! We were so close in 2015! But for the most part, HHN is my gateway into classic horror films. I’ll finally see a classic because it’s coming to HHN. I don’t have a lot of experience with horror films outside of what HHN has presented. I’m a haunt-attraction fan more than I’m a horror fan.

Jonathan Berrier, keeper of rumors and permits:

Something interesting I bring to the table for this particular conversation is that I’m a relatively new HHN fan in the grand scheme of things. I started going to the event in HHN 28, even though I had no prior interest in haunts, for one specific IP… and funny enough, it wasn’t Stranger Things. No, what I was looking forward to the most was seeing how Halloween Horror Nights would make a house out of one of my favorite horror films, Poltergeist. What’s interesting is that this wasn’t one of the properties/franchises on the Horrors Untold list. I’m not here to argue that it belongs there (I think the list is pretty spot-on when it comes to the biggest IPs), but I want to use this comparatively smaller property to open up a wider conversation about the importance of intellectual properties at the event as a whole.

Should IP dominance at the event come to an end? After all, we know that the widely popular franchises aren’t always available (look what happened with HHN 33), and I’m sure they aren’t cheap to acquire, either. Is it worth trying to keep that 5/5 or 4/6 split [between IP-based haunts and original ones] if there’s a chance that they are all smaller properties? Well, I think it is for two important reasons. The first is that while we know for a fact that the bigger properties bring tons of people to the event, the smaller ones still do, too. Last year was a fantastic example of this. HHN 33’s IP houses had the highest wait times at the event, particularly Insidious: The Further and A Quiet Place. I wouldn’t categorize those properties anywhere near the six mentioned on the list, yet they still racked up the longest wait times. This is a continuing trend ever since I’ve started attending. IP houses will usually attract the most people, regardless of their quality. Even Chucky: Ultimate Kill Count in HHN 32 was racking up waits of over two hours almost every single night. People want to step into their favorite horror films, games, shows, etc. It’s the biggest first-timer draw. That want is what encouraged me to face my fears and step into the fog for the first time, even if it wasn’t for the headliner of the event. No matter how big HHN gets, this will always be true to 99% of the general public.

The second reason that I wanted to bring up is that while we all love and adore original houses, they aren’t very marketable to the non-HHN fans. When’s the last time an original house got a house trailer? The house that comes to mind is HHN 30’s Icons: Captured, all the way back in 2021, and that’s only because of the drawing power of Jack the Clown and other previously established icons. No other original house that year got a trailer, and none have since. This is even including the sequel to one of the most highly praised originals in the past couple of years, Slaughter Sinema. A house about goblins, yetis, and, even, tooth fairies isn’t going to convince someone who might not know much about HHN to take a flight to Florida… but a house about the Ghostbusters might. Originals are great at turning those first-timers into full-blown fans, but they usually aren’t going to be the reason they go to the event in the first place. The question then becomes, isn’t the event crowded enough as-is? Absolutely. I would rather the park not be filled with more guests than it has been in recent years. However, more crowds mean more money for Universal, and, even more importantly, attracting new people to the event strengthens the Halloween Horror Nights brand. If Horror Unleashed [in Las Vegas] is a success, who knows how far the brand can travel around the world?

For these reasons, I believe IP dominance will always end up being a prominent feature at the event, but I also think the balance is shifting from what it once was. The event is starting to create new original icons again, and while they aren’t used that much in marketing, that’s a huge step in the right direction. When I entered the park for the first time in HHN 28, the opening zone was used to tell guests about all the IP houses they were going to experience. Now, it’s used to introduce guests to the original icons and the world that Universal has created. We’re also seeing Universal start to share popular original franchises between Orlando, Hollywood, and, now, Horror Unleashed, making them feel like Universal’s own IP, in a sense, instead of just original content. The balance is getting closer and closer to where I want it to be, and I hope this continues for years to come.

Who knows – maybe we’ll have to circle back to this question in a couple of years.

Nick Parabicoli, photographer:

I think the easiest answer to what has been the most influential IP for Halloween Horror Nights has often defaulted to Stranger Things. The series as a whole was a universal success and truly swept the nation. Everyone was talking about it (I believe season one accumulated over 14 million viewers just in the 18-49 demographic).

So when Universal announced Stranger Things was coming to HHN just months after season two debuted, I believe the reach of what HHN is spread to a new mass of people. Netflix being the streaming juggernaut that it is gave Universal an in with people that are outside the horror/haunt world, which really hadn’t been done before to this scale. We have seen crowds steadily increase over the years, and just from a “feel” perspective, Stranger Things at HHN 28 is when the water started to boil over the pot, so to speak.

Not only was the inclusion of Stranger Things a huge deal, but it also was a good house. Like, really good. The first house went on to win House of the Year, and with success comes sequels. Say what you want about the two sequel houses (no, they don’t hold a candle to the first), they brought people through the ticket gates in droves.

But just for fun, let’s look at the others. If American Horror Story flopped, would we have gotten Stranger Things? AHS came in to HHN 26 swinging, took home House of the Year, and spawned a sequel at HHN 27. Did this success help muster up the courage to tackle another successful franchise like Stranger Things? If so, would that make this more influential since it opened the door?

The same can be said for The Walking Dead. Yes, it overstayed its welcome at the end (both TV- and HHN-wise), but since I didn’t start going to HHN until 2015, I didn’t have to experience the fatigue firsthand.

People are quick to forget just how big of a phenom TWD was. It smashed records for AMC and was ahead of its time. If this series debuted on Netflix in 2016 instead of being on cable in 2010, just imagine the posts, tweets, TikToks, etc. This was the Stranger Things of the time, and HHN went all in while it was at its apex of “current horror.”

Obviously, if you are willing to bring back a property five years in a row (one year allowing it to fully take over the entire park), something is going very right. So this is a very “chicken or the egg” dilemma when it comes to Stranger Things, American Horror Story, and The Walking Dead. In my opinion, AHS and TWD walked so Stranger Things could run – and ran, it did.

I would throw out another name in the influence category, and that would be Blumhouse. We’ve seen it in every form – and succeed, to a certain extent, in most cases. We’ve had it as multi-property compilation houses, solo IP houses, scare zones, dance mobs, and Dead Coconut Club overlays. For the last couple years, it has been all over the park, and it seemingly won’t be stoped any time soon. There are more and more movies coming out from this production company, with one, in particular, being what many view as a true white whale: Five Nights at Freddy’s.

I don’t think the time of IPs will ever truly be over.

Can this event run off all originals? Yes.

Would the HHN diehards love that? Yes.

Would the casuals be confused and ask, “Where is insert IP here?” Most likely.

The IPs get people in the park, and the originals make them stay, but without the big IP headliner, I think the casuals’ interest does decrease.

Now, what do we lean into? Big IPs that are a little outside the “horror” world to attract new guests? Horror classics we haven’t seen before, like The Thing, It, or Scream? Smaller cult-style hits like Terrifier? New production companies like A24?

The possibilities are endless, and there is no right or wrong answer here. With HHN, one size does not fit all. We can go down so many avenues, and that’s why it’s the most successful haunt in the world. Variety is what keeps us guessing and excited all year long.

For even more on the role of intellectual properties at Halloween Horror Nights Orlando, be sure to check out Horrors Untold, the HHN guidebook/immersive horror mystery. You can read samples and buy your copy here.