Halsey Leads Horror Film 'Replacer,' Filming Starts September 16 in Montreal
Halsey will step into her first lead film role on 16 September, when the psycho-sexual horror feature Replacer begins filming in Montreal. The news landed via Deadline on 3 September 2026.
The singer plays Proxy, a troubled DJ stranded in Montreal who must escape a mysterious signal hidden beneath the city's subway system. Avan Jogia directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Halsey herself, making the project a true creative partnership rather than a hand-off assignment.
The cast rounds out with Karl Glusman and Juliette Gariépy, both announced alongside the production start date. Behind the camera, the producing team spans three companies: Kyle Mann of Independent Edge, Isabelle Deluce of Soft Focus Films, and Olivier Picard and David Pierrat of Parce Que Films. Lily Wachowski — co-director of The Matrix and Speed Racer — serves as executive producer.
Music lands with Alex Ridha, the German producer and composer better known by his stage name Boys Noize, who will score the film. The electronic-music pedigree lines up neatly with a story about a DJ trapped by sound.
On the business side, CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group are handling North American rights — the United States and Canada market — while Film Mode Entertainment takes international sales, meaning the film's foreign distribution deals will be negotiated through that company. No distribution partner has been publicly named yet; the rights arrangement signals that talks with potential distributors are still ahead, a common setup for independent films heading into production without a studio already attached.
For Halsey, Replacer is the most significant step yet into screen acting. She has appeared in supporting roles before, including a turn in the 2021 Amazon series The Player's Table development cycle, but this marks her first time carrying a feature as its lead. Co-writing the screenplay adds another layer: she is shaping the story as well as performing in it.
Jogia, best known to audiences from his work on Victorious and in films such as Zombieland: Double Tap, has been building a directing profile in recent years. Replacer adds a genre credit to that growing filmography.
