Late Night With the Devil Star Laura Gordon Joins Insidious 6

Quick one for the horror crowd: Laura Gordon, fresh off the 2024 cult-surge of 'Late Night with the Devil,' is stepping into the 'Insidious' universe. Per Deadline, she has joined 'Insidious 6,' which is targeting a theatrical release on August 21, 2026. No word yet on who she plays, so file that under TBD.

What you need to know right now

• Release target: August 21, 2026 (theatrical)
• Director: Jacob Chase, who did the 2020 creep-out 'Come Play'
• Writers: Jacob Chase and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
• Producers: Jason Blum, Oren Peli, James Wan, Leigh Whannell
• Executive producers: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Ryan Turek, Steven Schneider, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
• Filming: Underway in Australia
• Cast so far: Amelia Eve ('The Haunting of Bly Manor'), Brandon Perea ('Nope'), Maisie Richardson-Sellers ('The Originals'), Sam Spruell ('Legend'), Island Austin ('I Can Only Imagine 2'), and franchise icon Lin Shaye

That last name is the key one. Lin Shaye is the connective tissue of this whole thing, so her presence keeps it feeling like 'Insidious' even as the ensemble shuffles. As for plot details? Nothing solid has been shared yet, which is very on-brand for this franchise until we get a trailer.

The spin-off that might still happen

A quick bit of franchise archaeology, because it is very inside baseball and kind of fascinating: back in January 2022, James Wan was shepherding a mystery project pitched as 'Back to the Future meets Aliens' from Jeremy Slater (the Exorcist TV series, head writer on Marvel's 'Moon Knight'). By the time the Wan/Blumhouse collab 'Insidious: The Red Door' (aka Part 5) hit in 2023, that mystery film was revealed as a spin-off called 'Thread: An Insidious Tale.'

'Thread' had Mandy Moore and Kumail Nanjiani attached as a married couple who use a spell to time-travel and stop their young daughter's death. Naturally, messing with time in the 'Insidious' world goes badly. Wan even teased that 'Thread' could be the first of multiple spin-offs built around The Further, the franchise's foggy nightmare plane.

'Thread basically kind of takes off from the world of The Further in the same way that when I look at my Conjuring films, I go, "Hey, the Warrens have a haunted museum, there’s so many different haunted artifacts that we can kind of spin off stories from," and Thread really is something in that same spirit. Leigh Whannell and I had kind of built this place called The Further in the Insidious world, and we just felt like there were many stories within that that we can tell, and this is one of the potential stories that we’re hoping to kind of get out there with the spinoff.'

Great pitch, wild mash-up, and it makes sense creatively. The catch: 'Thread' never actually went into production, and we still do not know if it will. So for now, the mainline franchise keeps moving with 'Insidious 6' — and with Gordon joining the cast, the talent pool is looking solid.