YouTube Horror Creator Sam Evenson Takes 'Ignore It' to the Big Screen with Lily Collias Leading
A seven-minute horror short that racked up over 12 million views on YouTube is becoming a feature film. Sam Evenson, the creator behind the Grimoire Horror channel, will write and direct Ignore It as his feature debut, with Lily Collias set to star, Variety reported on 3 September 2026.
The premise is the kind of high-concept hook that travels well online: a family must survive living alongside an entity known as "The Woman," who kills anyone who acknowledges her existence. The story began as a viral Reddit post on the r/NoSleep forum, titled You're Going to Notice a Woman in Your Home, You Must Ignore Her, written by Jeff Speziale. Evenson adapted it into a short film in 2021, and the two are now collaborating to expand the premise to feature length.
Temple Hill Entertainment — the production company behind the Twilight and Maze Runner franchises — is producing alongside Anton, the London-based film finance and sales outfit. Anton is fully financing the project and handling worldwide sales, which it will launch at the Toronto International Film Festival this month. Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, John Fischer, Hal Sadoff and Ben Levine produce for Temple Hill; Anton's Sébastien Raybaud and Kathy Stocker serve as executive producers.
Lily Collias will play Becca, a lead role in the film. Collias broke out in India Donaldson's 2024 Sundance and Cannes selection Good One and recently appeared in Roofman. She is repped by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
Evenson brings an unusual combination of backgrounds to the project. His Grimoire Horror channel has grown past 199,000 subscribers on the strength of bite-sized scares. Professionally, he is a visual effects artist with credits on Dune: Part Two, HBO's The Last of Us and Thor: Love and Thunder — a resume that gives him hands-on experience with the kind of large-scale production infrastructure a feature requires.
He is also developing another viral short, Mora, into a feature with Neon, though Ignore It will go into production first. Evenson is repped by UTA, Untitled and Ziffren Brittenham; Speziale is repped by Verve, Story Driven and VanderKloot Law.
The path from a Reddit post to a YouTube short to a fully financed feature is not new — the horror genre has a long history of viral concepts crossing into theatrical territory. What gives Ignore It its momentum is a 12-million-view proof of concept already sitting on a public platform, a financier in Anton willing to back it fully, and a Toronto sales launch that will determine how many territories pick it up before a single frame is shot.
