Steven Spielberg’s new horror series will only be available after dark

Director Steven Spielberg is writing a horror series for mobile-focused streaming service Quibi (short for “Quick Bites”), which viewers will only be able to watch at night.

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg revealed on Sunday, June 9, at the Banff World Media Festival in Canada on that his former Dreamworks colleague Spielberg (“Jurassic Park”, “Schindler’s List”, “The Post”) was working on a “super scary” horror TV show, with the working title of “Spielberg’s After Dark”. The award-winning filmmaker has already written several episodes, with a potential dozen planned.

Steven Spielberg. Image: AFP/Robyn Beck

Spielberg wanted viewers to only be able to view the show after midnight, so Quibi engineers designed smartphone technology with a clock that tracks the sun in viewers’ locations, allowing them access to the show only between sundown and sunup. Episodes will become available after dark and disappear as soon as the sun comes up, until the next night.

Mobile-only Quibi is set for an April 2020 launch in North America, focusing on videos seven to ten minutes long. Projects already lined up include “#Freerayshawn”, starring Stephen James and Laurence Fishburne, an untitled Steven Soderbergh project, and “Punk’d” and “Singled Out” reboots from MTV Studios.

Spielberg is also developing a revival of his anthology series “Amazing Stories” for Apple TV Plus. RGA/JB

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