Sony Pictures has officially announced that Skeletons, the upcoming creature horror film starring Brie Larson and directed by JT Mollner, will arrive in theaters on June 4, 2027. The announcement, made on July 20, gives one of the horror genre’s most anticipated upcoming releases a confirmed summer release date. The film is currently in production.
The June 4, 2027 release positions Skeletons as a major summer horror title and marks Mollner’s first feature since Strange Darling, the acclaimed 2024 indie thriller that established him as one of the genre’s most promising filmmakers.
Sony acquired Skeletons earlier this year following a competitive bidding war at the European Film Market. Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Neon were also reportedly pursuing the project before Sony secured the rights. The level of competition underscored the industry’s confidence in the film’s source material, creative team, and cast long before cameras began rolling.
The film is based on Fail-Safe, a short story by author Philip Fracassi. Its path to the screen has been anything but conventional. Fracassi initially struggled to find a publisher before the story was eventually included in one of his short story collections, where it gained enough attention to attract Hollywood interest. Universal Pictures optioned the story in 2022, but the rights reverted in 2024 after the option expired, paving the way for the bidding war that ultimately brought the project to Sony.
Rather than being developed within a studio, Skeletons was assembled as a filmmaker-driven package. Mollner brought together the screenplay, cast, and creative team before presenting the project to studios, an approach that helped generate widespread interest across Hollywood.
Last month, Fracassi marked the start of production with an emotional Instagram post, expressing his excitement about seeing the story adapted for the big screen and visiting the set. His message reflected the long journey from an independently published short story to a major studio production.
The screenplay was originally written by Brian Duffield, whose upcoming adaptation of Whalefall is also in development, before Mollner completed a full rewrite ahead of production. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story follows a young boy whose relationship with his mother becomes increasingly unsettling as she is locked inside a cage every night. Beyond that chilling premise, plot details remain tightly under wraps.
Brie Larson leads the ensemble alongside Kyle Gallner, reuniting with Mollner after Strange Darling. The cast also includes John Goodman, Willa Fitzgerald, Ione Skye, Daithí Ó Haragáin, and Keith Carradine. The film is produced by J.J. Abrams through Bad Robot Productions alongside FilmNation’s Infrared label and Assemble Media.
With production underway and a June 4, 2027 release date now confirmed, Skeletons has officially moved from one of horror’s most talked-about development projects to one firmly on the theatrical calendar. Combining a sought-after creative team, an acclaimed source story, and a high-profile cast, the film is already shaping up to be one of the genre’s biggest releases of 2027.
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