‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ lead new wave of film to stage spectacles

As cinema attendance continues to lag behind pre pandemic levels, producers are increasingly turning to a different kind of big screen magic, film to stage adaptations that promise immersive experiences and built in fan bases, especially among younger audiences.

A fast growing example is Paranormal Activity, reimagined as a live horror thriller. The play premiered at Leeds Playhouse in July 2024, ran for a month, then crossed the Atlantic for engagements at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, where it is running through early December. Further dates in Washington DC and San Francisco are planned, before a West End transfer to the Ambassadors Theatre from December 2025 through March 2026.

The original Paranormal Activity film, written and directed by Oren Peli in 2007, became a landmark in low budget horror, made for around 15,000 dollars and earning nearly 200 million dollars worldwide. The stage version, written by Levi Holloway and directed by Punchdrunk co founder Felix Barrett, keeps the intimate, psychological focus while swapping found footage for live, in your face frights.

The story follows Lou and James, a young couple who relocate from Chicago to London to escape a troubled past, only to discover that their demons have travelled with them. The play leans into the idea that houses are not haunted, people are, turning the couple’s new home into a pressure cooker of suspicion, guilt and unexplained phenomena.

On stage, the horror is delivered through a barrage of jump scares and illusions designed to jolt audiences out of their seats. Tony Award winner Chris Fisher, known for his visual wizardry on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Back to the Future and Stranger Things: The First Shadow, has created an arsenal of tricks for the show, from objects that move seemingly of their own accord to apparitions that appear and vanish in an instant.

Much of the unease comes from the set itself. Designer Fly Davis has built a full two storey house, its walls sliced away to reveal three upstairs rooms and a large living room below. The effect is like peering into a human sized dollhouse. As the couple move from space to space, tension comes from watching multiple rooms at once, never knowing where a shadow will flicker, a door will slam or a figure will suddenly emerge.

Horror is particularly suited to this kind of shared experience, says Foster Cronin, vice president of programming and education at the Dr Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Audience reactions become part of the show’s rhythm, as collective gasps, nervous laughter and moments of silence feed the atmosphere and heighten the scares. For many younger spectators, that live reaction loop is part of the attraction.

It is also one reason film based stage shows have become a reliable gateway to theatre for Gen Z and millennials. While older audiences might still gravitate to long running staples such as The Lion King, younger fans are drawn to familiar franchises that have been reimagined as high impact, experiential events. Ben Kruger, chief marketing officer of ticket marketplace Event Tickets Center, notes that social media clips from these productions can go viral, sparking fear of missing out and pushing fans to book tickets.

That is exactly the strategy behind The Hunger Games: On Stage, which opened this month at the newly built Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre in London and is set to run until October 2026. Based on the 2012 Lionsgate film, itself adapted from Suzanne Collins’ bestselling novels, the production plunges audiences into the brutal televised contest that forces teenagers to fight to the death in a dystopian future.

The new venue has been engineered around the story. The theatre is in the round, with a central playing space representing District 12, while seating blocks around it correspond to different districts from the books and films. Some sections move and reconfigure during key scenes, pulling spectators into the action. The design also makes extensive use of 360 degree projections to suggest shifting arenas, propaganda broadcasts and the ever watching eye of the Capitol.

Playwright Conor McPherson and director Matthew Dunster lead the creative team. Early reactions have noted that the stage version does not shy away from the brutality of the source material. Actress Mia Carragher, who plays Katniss Everdeen, has described the production as unflinching, with violence that feels immediate precisely because it happens a few metres from the audience rather than on a cinema screen.

For producers and venues, these projects provide a way to bridge the gap between the cinematic worlds that younger audiences already love and the live performance formats that need new energy after the shocks of the pandemic. For fans, they offer something that neither streaming nor traditional theatre can fully replicate, the chance to step inside a familiar universe and experience it together in real time, with every scream, gasp and cheer part of the show.

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