Spielberg Produces The Mandela Catalogue - June 2028

A viral nightmare is crossing from YouTube to movie theaters: The Mandela Catalogue, produced by Steven Spielberg, will hit cinemas on June 9, 2028.

The move follows a wave of renewed interest in analog horror after the unexpected box-office strength of Backrooms. Amblin Entertainment is attached, Scott Stuber of United Artists is onboard as a producer, and Amazon MGM is backing the project—an alliance that signals this won’t be a small, niche adaptation but a major studio event.

For those who haven’t lived inside the rabbit hole, The Mandela Catalogue began as a 2021 YouTube series that has since amassed more than 100 million views across its official episodes. It takes place in the fictional Mandela County, Wisconsin. Strange things happen there. Even stranger: what looks like a friendly face is often a trap.

At the heart of the story are the Alternates—shapeshifting, nearly immortal entities that mimic people and manipulate audiovisual media. Directed by a false image of the archangel Gabriel, these creatures wage a campaign of psychological torment aimed at erasing humanity, driving victims toward self-destruction by twisting what they see and hear on TVs, phones, computers and GPS devices. It’s a concept that preys on our most intimate technologies and the fragile trust we place in images.

Alex Kister, the series creator, steps into the director’s chair for the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Tyler Clifton. Expect an adaptation that leans into the uncanny, preserving the series’ found-footage unease while scaling up for a theatrical audience. The release date—Friday, June 9, 2028—places the film squarely in the summer slate, where it will test how well analog horror translates to a multiplex experience.

Will the movie keep the whisper-quiet dread of the original series or turn that subtle terror into something louder and more visible? Mark your calendars; summer 2028 just got a lot more unsettling.