Fear Factor Goes Vertical With an Original Horror Series Made for Phones

Fox Entertainment Studios and Endemol Shine North America are making a scripted horror series based on the Fear Factor franchise, and it will be built for phone screens. Deadline reported the project on 27 October 2026.

The series does not have a title yet. It will debut on My Drama, a platform run by Holywater Tech, and it will run for 30 episodes of about three minutes each. It is made for mobile-first viewers, meaning people who watch mainly on their phones, and it is filmed in vertical format, so the picture fills a phone held upright.

The story is an original fictional horror tale. It is set during prep week on a remote horror television set, so the drama follows people working on a show before filming begins. Thom Woodley and Andrew Beck wrote the series, Gabriel Caste directs it, and Ian Nsenga and Yuliia Vyshnevska produce it. Fox Entertainment Global will handle distribution around the world.

Deadline describes the project as the first move from an established unscripted franchise into an original scripted series. Unscripted means shows such as competitions and reality programmes, which are not built on a written script. Scripted means drama with a written story and actors playing fixed characters. Fear Factor has spent years as a reality contest, so this is a change in kind, not just in length.

The franchise's latest version is Fear Factor: House of Fear, which Endemol Shine North America reimagined. Endemol Shine North America is a Banijay America company. In that show, contestants live together in one house, and Johnny Knoxville hosts. Fox has renewed House of Fear for a second season, with Knoxville returning as host, according to a Fox release from May 2026.

For viewers, the change is clear. The reality show asks people to compete in a house. The new series asks them to follow a made-up horror story, told in short episodes on a phone. Fox and Endemol Shine have not yet said when the first episode will go live, and the titled and dated details will come with the official launch.

Vertical series have become a busy corner of the market, with platforms competing for attention in short bursts. Holywater Tech's My Drama is one of the places where that kind of storytelling is shown. Here, the Fear Factor name will be attached to a scripted show for the first time, and the people who make it are the ones to watch as the project moves forward.