'Five Nights at Freddy's,' 'Terrifier,' 'Fallout,' 'Friday the 13th,' 'Poltergeist' Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection; Cineverse/Courtesy Everett Collection; Amazon Prime Video; Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection; (C)MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection Logo text Each year, Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights pushes the limit on what a seasonal after-hours event can be. For Mike Aiello, creative director of HHN for Universal Orlando Resort, this year is about ramping up the scares across the park, while also introducing new event experiences like roving zombie carhops and a DJ dance area. "There's always something for everybody at the event, but I think it's most true this year with the diversity of content, from the IP and original house ideas, and the connective tissue, which is our Scare Zone program," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "This year has evolved into something I think everyone's going to like as a creative entity." Related Stories Business TKO Punches Up Earnings After Announcing ESPN Megadeal, Driven By Live Events Business WWE Just Dealt Peacock Another Big Blow Lora Sauls, assistant director of creative development and entertainment for UOR, says, "We're filling in all those locations that had a moment to breathe, to bring a lot more characters, a lot more haunting, effects and lighting to the entire park. The Cat Lady of Cricket Lane scare zone? You're going through Central Park. We got to expand that scare zone beyond the trees and into the circle, so you're going to see the cat lady's house, some cat beds and get some more scares in there. It's a house moment in the streets." Alongside a bar themed to rock icon Slash and vinyl featuring original HHN tracks, for John Murdy, creative director for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, one of this year's big creative needle movers is Five Nights at Freddy's full-scale animatronics. "If you had come to me five, 10 years ago and asked if we could do a house on Five Nights at Freddy's?' I probably would have said it's impossible," says Murdy. There's also WWE Presents: The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks, "a good example thematically of how we're pushing the boundaries of what can be horror." "Our fans have been asking for some of these properties for years, so this year we really wanted to go, 'Let's give it to them. Let's straight up curate this year with what our fans' greatest desires,'" Murdy explains. In a first interview discussing their larger lineup for this year's bicoastal event, Murdy, Aiello and Sauls share a number of new details about what attendees of both the Hollywood and Orlando parks can expect out of their respective and shared IP houses, original houses and more. Fallout House The first house announced as part of this year's event involved working closely with the Fallout team and Amazon's Prime Video. The teams were provided asset access to recreate the TV series' universe, including full turnarounds and 3D models of The Ghoul (the character played by Walton Goggins) and his face so the even's masks are identical to the look in the show. There was also a teaser created specifically to aid the house's creation that "filmed one of their characters for us to tease their second season in the house," says Sauls. Within the house experience, Aiello notes that it will be different from one of 2023's most popular houses, The Last of Us, in that structurally, the experience will take on a montage feel "where there's an order of events to the house, but we're using time as the connective tissues, jumping to places so we're able to deliver the variety of environments the series and game possess." The experience on both coasts will be appearance-heavy, primarily through Lucy (Ella Purnell's character) and her journey. Still expect to see The Ghoul and Maximus (Aaron Moten's character), but also as Aiello and Sauls note, the radroaches, T-60s and raiders - all set to the franchise's 1950s-inspired soundtrack. Orlando's team hypes traveling to Philadelphia and a battle between The Ghoul and life-size T-60s. For the Hollywood house, Murdy says eventgoers will get to experience stepping out into the wasteland with a "big cyclorama to make it feel endless all around you and convey that post-apocalyptic horror." Fans can also navigate the Ghoul's graveyard and Ghoul-infested Super Duper Mart, alongside an encounter with an irradiated bear, "one of the biggest creatures we've ever built - with the clay alone on it, the sculpt weighs over 500 pounds." Terrifier House Conceptualization on the house began ahead of Terrifier 3's release, and will feature an onslaught to your senses that not only includes a litany of smells (bad and good), but extensive effects that evoke the feeling of being "showered" in a "symphony of blood," both teams tease. "There's probably more of those types of effects created for this house than we've ever done before," says Murdy. It's so intense, S