Vera Farmiga Returns to Occult Horror in Bryan Hill’s ‘Inferno’: The Black Branch, the Team and Everything We Know

Vera Farmiga spent the better part of 12 years walking into haunted houses so the rest of us didn't have to. Now that Lorraine Warren has officially hung up the crucifix, the actress is heading straight back into the dark, this time without Ed Warren at her side and without a church-approved case file. Variety broke the news on Monday, November 9, that Farmiga will star in and executive produce Inferno , a supernatural serial-killer thriller written and directed by Bryan Hill, the comics and TV writer behind runs on Batman and the Outsiders and American Carnage.

It's a pitch built to make horror fans sit up: a former detective, a killer who may not be entirely human, and a rumored occult unit buried inside Scotland Yard. It's also a business story, because Inferno surfaced as a package being shopped to buyers at the American Film Market. Below, we break down everything confirmed so far, who's making it, how it fits into Farmiga's genre career, why the sales pitch name-drops Manhunter and Longlegs , and what still has to happen before anyone sees a frame.

Is there a trailer?

Not yet, and there won't be for a while. Inferno is in pre-production, with cameras not scheduled to roll until late spring, so no footage, teaser or official still exists. We'll embed the first official look the moment one drops. For now, the best preview is Farmiga's own track record, which we dig into below.

The details: what's confirmed

Here's what the announcement and the trade coverage that followed actually lock in:

• Title: Inferno.
• Star: Vera Farmiga, who is also attached as executive producer.
• Writer-director: Bryan Hill.
• Producers: Ara Keshishian and Petr Jákl for ZQ Entertainment, alongside Adrian Askarieh of Prime Universe Films.
• Sales: Manifest Pictures is handling international sales and introducing the film to buyers at AFM. iHorror reports that CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group are co-representing domestic rights.
• Production: scheduled to start in late spring. No shooting location has been announced.
• Release: no distributor, date or rating yet.

The story, as described in the materials: Farmiga plays a former detective whose pursuit of a killer drags her back into the Black Branch, a whispered-about special unit at Scotland Yard that investigates the occult. That puts her face to face with the kind of paranormal terror she believed she had left behind. It's worth stressing that the Black Branch is fiction dressed as rumor, not a piece of documented police history, which is exactly the kind of "is this real?" hook that sells well in this genre.

Hill framed the project as horror with ideas on its mind. Per Dread Central, he said, "Great horror films challenge what we believe about the world," and praised Farmiga's intelligence and presence as the right fit to lead viewers through the darkness. Manifest's co-CEOs leaned hard on the comparisons: Zach Glueck said the company was "immediately sucked into Hill's script" and pointed to Manhunter for its investigative tension and to The Exorcist and Longlegs for performance-driven horror, while co-CEO Yvette Zhuang pitched it to Creepy Catalog as a cross between a serial-killer procedural and possession horror.

Who's behind it

Vera Farmiga

Photo: Vera Farmiga at the Paley Center for Media, 2013, via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).

Few actors have a genre résumé this deep without being typecast by it. Farmiga's horror run started before the Warrens, with the creepy-kid double feature of Joshua (2007) and Orphan (2009). Orphan cost about $20 million and grossed roughly $78.8 million worldwide, and it was good enough to spawn a 2022 prequel, Orphan: First Kill. The same year as Orphan , she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Up in the Air , and in 2011 she directed and starred in her debut feature, Higher Ground , which premiered at Sundance.

Then came the long haul. She played Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). In parallel, she spent five seasons and 50 episodes as Norma Bates on A&E's Bates Motel , from March 2013 to April 2017, a role that won her a Saturn Award and an Emmy nomination. Throw in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and you have someone who has carried horror on the big screen, on cable and in a kaiju blockbuster.

Bryan Hill

Hill is the less familiar name to movie audiences, but not to comics readers. His credits, as summarized by iHorror, include Batman and the Outsiders for DC, the crime series American Carnage , episodes of the live-action Titans , and a feature called Archangel that's currently in post-production. Inferno is the kind of contained, character-first genre film that writers with his background often use to step into directing, and the script is clearly the thing that got the package moving.

The producers

Photo: Petr Jákl via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).

Petr Jákl is a Czech filmmaker with one of the more unusual paths into producing: a former judoka who competed in the heavyweight division at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, then worked as a stuntman on Hollywood productions including XXX and Alien vs. Predator before directing features such as Kajínek (2010). His ZQ Entertainment partner Ara Keshishian's credits include the Ted Bundy film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile , so serial-killer material isn't new territory for this team. Adrian Askarieh, through Prime Universe Films, is best known for the Hitman movies.

The backstory: life after Lorraine

To understand why this announcement landed with a thud of excitement, you have to look at where Farmiga's signature franchise just ended up. The Conjuring: Last Rites , directed by Michael Chaves, opened September 5, 2025, and was billed as the Warrens' final case. It opened to $84 million domestically, the best start in franchise history, and finished around $499 million worldwide on a reported $55 million budget, making it the highest-grossing entry in the series, despite a middling 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Warner Bros. hasn't let the universe rest. A prequel, The Conjuring: First Communion , is dated for September 10, 2027, with Rodrigue Huart directing from a script by Richard Naing and Ian Goldberg, and iHorror reports Garrett Wareing and Amanda Fix are playing the younger Warrens. There's also an HBO Max series in development with Nancy Won as showrunner. In other words, Lorraine lives on, just not with Farmiga's face. That's why Inferno matters: it's a chance to see what Farmiga does with the supernatural when she isn't playing the franchise's moral compass, and it's why so many outlets led with "Farmiga returns."

By the numbers: the comps in the pitch

Sales pitches are aspirational by design, so it's worth checking the films Manifest name-checked against reality:

• Manhunter (1986): Michael Mann's film, the first screen appearance of Hannibal Lecter, cost an estimated $14-15 million and made only about $8.6 million in the U.S., a flop on release that became a cult touchstone. A 4K "Final Cut" restoration hit U.S. theaters on July 24, 2026.
• Longlegs (2024): Osgood Perkins' occult serial-killer film cost under $10 million, opened to $22.4 million and grossed about $128 million worldwide for Neon. A new Longlegs film was announced in April 2026, with Paramount taking over distribution.
• The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025): $55 million budget, $84 million opening, about $499 million worldwide.
• Orphan (2009): about $20 million budget, about $78.8 million worldwide.

Notice the pattern. The ceiling for a cop-meets-occult horror film is enormous when it hits, and the floor is Manhunter : beloved decades later, ignored at the box office. The difference is rarely the premise. It's marketing, mood and a performance people can't stop talking about.

Analysis: what this really means

The Longlegs effect is now a sales category. Two years ago, "FBI agent chases a killer with satanic fingerprints" was a niche pitch. After Longlegs turned a sub-$10 million indie into a $128 million hit, it became a lane. Inferno is explicitly positioned in that lane, swapping the American heartland for London and adding the detective-unit angle that gives it obvious sequel or series potential. Buyers at AFM love a film that can be sold as "the next X" with a recognizable star attached, and Farmiga is about as recognizable as horror leads get.

Farmiga's choice says something. She could have gone prestige-drama after Last Rites , and her recent slate has included non-genre work. Instead, she's attaching herself as an executive producer to an independent, director-driven occult thriller that's being sold market by market. That's a bet on material over machinery: a bankable genre face lending credibility to a filmmaker with something specific to say. It also means she isn't simply walking away from the "paranormal investigator" persona; she's re-forming it in darker, less sanctified territory. Lorraine had faith on her side. A burned-out detective in a secret occult unit presumably does not.

The risk is the procedural. Serial-killer-meets-supernatural is a crowded genre on TV, and films that lean too far into case-of-the-week mechanics can feel like a pilot. The comparison to The Exorcist suggests the team knows the scares have to come from character, not just clue-hunting. Hill's comics background is promising here: crime and superhero writing both reward world-building, but a feature has to deliver a complete, terrifying story in about two hours, not set up a universe.

And the independent route cuts both ways. Without a studio already attached, Inferno depends on presales and a distributor deal. That's how plenty of great horror gets made, and it gives Hill more creative room than a franchise chapter would. But it also means dates can slip, and the eventual release could land anywhere from a wide theatrical rollout to a streamer.

What we still don't know

• Who else is in the cast, including whoever plays the killer.
• Where it shoots, and whether London locations are real or recreated elsewhere.
• Which year "late spring" refers to. The announcement didn't specify, though the natural reading is spring 2027.
• Who distributes it in the U.S., and whether it goes theatrical or streaming.
• How much the Black Branch is a one-film device versus a franchise setup.

Expect more news once AFM deals start getting announced, and casting reports as the start of production gets closer.

Bottom line

Inferno is still just a script, a star and a very good logline. But it's the right star, with a strong pedigree of turning paranormal material into real performances, and it's arriving at the exact moment occult crime horror has proven it can sell. If Hill delivers something closer to Longlegs than to a TV pilot, Farmiga may have found her post-Warren calling card.

So, horror fans: are you more excited for Vera Farmiga hunting an occult killer in Inferno , or do you wish she'd come back as Lorraine Warren one more time? Tell us in the comments.

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Header photo: Vera Farmiga via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added.

Sources: Variety, Dread Central, iHorror, Creepy Catalog, ComingSoon, Horror Fuel, The Conjuring: Last Rites box office data, Longlegs box office data, Manhunter box office data, Bates Motel episode data.