Epic Games hired Prologue Films to create a 30-second teaser for Fortnitemares, Fortnite’s annual Halloween-themed in-game event. We drew heavily on our title sequences for American Horror Story and approached it the same way: unsettling, layered imagery that rewards a second look.
The teaser features eleven horror properties from games, film, TV, anime and internet folklore, with one rule: hint at every one of them without giving anything away. In five weeks, from research to delivery, we studied each IP to find details only real fans would catch, then shot most of it practically.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Bare hands push out of a boiler. It echoes Freddy’s famous push through the wall in the original film and points back to the boiler room where he was burned.
99 Nights in the Forest: A giant antlered effigy stands in front of a campfire. Our art department built it from branches, twigs, leaves and foliage.
Black Clover: We staged and shot a devil-binding ritual.
Hollow Knight: An infected figure in a horned, goat-like skull mask sits on a bench while real beetles crawl around it.
Hazbin Hotel: We filmed a real cat and turned its face into a single eye in post. A 3D wall of red eyes twitches and turns toward the camera.
The Purge: A grandfather clock strikes 7 p.m., the hour the Purge begins. Lightning flashes and throws Lady Liberty’s shadow across the clock face.
Obsession: We shot a duct-taped door and a woman’s figure barely visible in a dark corner.
Slender Man: Tentacles creep out from behind a tree and stretch into the forest, built in 3D.
Beetlejuice: We built a tabletop model of the Fortnite island like the film’s model town and made a set of shrunken heads. A trained black-and-white striped snake crawls between the heads, shot practically on set.
Halloween Horror Nights: A 3D haunted carnival with a giant clown-head entrance, a nod to Jack the Clown.
Predator: Badlands: Three dots burned into a tree trunk, with real smoke still rising as if the targeting laser just left.
