The Alternates are coming to theaters. June 9, 2028.
Alex Kister’s analog horror YouTube series The Mandela Catalogue now has a theatrical release date, a director, a producing team, and a studio deal. Deadline broke the news on September 11.
How the Deal Happened
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, United Artists’ Scott Stuber, and Amazon MGM Studios won the film rights following a highly competitive 11-studio bidding war. The race to secure internet horror franchises with built-in Gen Z audiences has intensified dramatically. Backrooms grossed $394 million worldwide. Obsession rewrote the rules entirely. Hollywood now views Kister’s franchise as the next major domino. The deal closed in July 2026. Yesterday, the release date became official.
What Is The Mandela Catalogue?
Kister launched the series in 2021. It follows Mandela County, Wisconsin, a fictional region invaded in the 1990s and 2000s by shape-shifting, nearly immortal creatures called Alternates. Led by a false depiction of the Archangel Gabriel, the Alternates aim to wipe out human civilization through psychological torture. The series blends analog horror aesthetics, grainy footage, emergency broadcasts, public service announcements, with genuinely unsettling imagery. To date, 19 episodes exist, with the most recent arriving in March 2026. Critics widely consider it one of the defining titles in the analog horror genre, alongside Local 58 and Backrooms.
The Creative Team
Kister directs the feature from a screenplay he co-wrote with Tyler Clifton — giving the franchise’s original creator direct creative control. This mirrors the approach taken by Backrooms director Kane Parsons, who also stepped straight from YouTube to feature filmmaker. The film combines traditional live action with found footage elements. Kister has described its central goal as creating “an everlasting fear” through silence, dread, and uncanny valley imagery.
According to Kister’s own summary, the story follows a group of high school graduates struggling to maintain their grip on reality. A local student disappears. Unexplainable, unsettling events follow. Importantly, the film exists in its own continuity, it is not canon to the current YouTube series lore.
Producers include Spielberg, Kister, Clifton, Holly Bario for Amblin, Aaron B. Koontz and Nick Nesbitt for Paper Street Pictures, Scott Stuber for United Artists, and Annie McCreery and Maria Fortese for Amazon MGM Studios.
No cast has been announced. No production start date has been confirmed. The film is currently in active development, the release date and greenlight are confirmed, but the full package is still being assembled.
The Mandela Catalogue opens in theaters nationwide on June 9, 2028.
