Toronto: Mike Flanagan’s ‘Carrie,’ Shawn Ryan’s ‘American Hostage’ Join Primetime 2026 Program

Summer H. Howell in 'Carrie.' Robert Falconer/Prime

As the Toronto Film Festival continues to celebrate the best in serialized TV storytelling, the latest series from Mike Flanagan, Shawn Ryan and more celebrated writers have been booked into the event’s Primetime program for September.

In all, 10 small-screen projects were unveiled for big-screen showings at TIFF’s 51st edition, with the shows toplined by Linda Cardellini, Jon Hamm, Carrie-Anne Moss, Gary Oldman and Hudson Williams, among others. The sidebar will open with Netflix’s Below, from creator Jesse McKeown, a six-part supernatural thriller that centers on a seaside town Newfoundland besieged by a sea creature and stars Mackenzie Davis, Charlie Heaton and Josh Hartnett.

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And Primetime will close with showrunner Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, a reimagining for Prime Video of Stephen King’s classic novel about a high school girl with telekinetic powers, and with Summer H. Howell in the lead role. The sidebar typically screens one or two episodes and holds informal conversations with cast and creators in Toronto.

There’s also world bows for the American Hostage psychological thriller series, from Shawn Ryan, Eileen Myers and Adam Arkin, as it adapts the podcast of the same name into a live-action TV series, and the Friday the 13th prequel Crystal Lake for Peacock and about a single mother (Cardellini) unable to get beyond grief over her young, sickly son after he drowned in the town lake almost a year earlier.

There’s also world premieres for 2.6 Seconds: Death in the Outback, the Australian true crime documentary; Alice, the story of the world’s first woman director starring Berenice Bejo (The Artist), and from directors Virginie Verrier and Guillaume Lonergan for HBO Max and France Televisions; David Nawrath’s Blindspot Berlin thriller; and Yaga, the Carrie-Anne Moss and Hudson Williams series from showrunner Kat Sandler as it reimagines the myth of Baba Yaga for Crave.

Toronto is also giving an international premiere for the latest season of the Apple TV spy thriller Slow Horses and a North American bow for the Brazilian series Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically, from Marcelo Gomes and Carol Minêm.

TIFF earlier announced CODA filmmaker Sian Heder will open the 51st edition with Being Heumann. The Toronto Film Festival will run from Sept. 10-20.