From Gridiron to Graveyard: Jordan Peele’s Upcoming Horror Turns Friday Night Lights into a Vampire Nightmare

Get ready for something totally different, a horror movie set in the world of American football. HIM is the latest genre-bending project from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, and it promises a terrifying mash-up of sports drama and supernatural scares.

Directed and co-written by Justin Tipping, the film follows a rising football star who finds himself on a much darker path than he expected.

The story centers on Cameron Cade, a young and ambitious player played by Tyriq Withers. He’s invited to train at a secluded training compound run by football legend Isaiah White, played by Marlon Wayans.

What starts out as a dream opportunity soon turns into a nightmare, as Cameron’s quest to become the greatest of all time (or the “GOAT”) comes with disturbing consequences.

Tipping, speaking to Empire, explained that the movie starts out feeling like a classic sports story before everything flips. “My instinct was to set it up in a way that it feels like we’re in Friday Night Lights, or a Gatorade or Nike ad,” he said. “We’re rooting for the kid who just needs to unlock one thing to take it to the next level. And then we subvert the expectations and let it become Nosferatu or Ex Machina.”

That shift from sports to horror gave Tipping a lot of creative freedom. He said the movie eventually channels the energy of psychological horror like Jacob’s Ladder. “Once I started leaning into some of my favourite horror… the creative floodgates just opened.”

For Peele, HIM fits perfectly into the kind of risky, original filmmaking Monkeypaw was built to champion. “At Monkeypaw, we love ideas that shouldn’t be made and that we’re not supposed to touch,” Peele told Empire. “And the combination of sports and horror was something I had never quite seen. It was just clear that we had a genre mash-up that was right up my alley.”

The idea for HIM originally came from a spec script called Goat, written by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie. Universal Pictures picked it up in 2022, and it was named one of the best unproduced scripts on that year’s Black List. Tipping signed on to direct in early 2024, and the cast quickly came together, with Wayans and Withers in the lead roles. Julia Fox also appears as Isaiah’s wife, along with Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, and others.

Filming wrapped in late 2024, and composer Bobby Krlic has created the score for the movie. Krlic previously worked on horror hits like Midsommar, so expect something haunting and intense.

HIM will hit theaters in the United States on September 19, 2025, distributed by Universal Pictures. If you’ve ever wanted to see what happens when Friday Night Lights turns into a full-blown nightmare, this movie might be exactly your kind of weird.

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