Halloween Horror Nights is constantly pushing expectations. But this latest effort will leave diehard fans even more Obsessed. 

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Earlier this month, the L.A. park’s HHN Creative Director and executive producer John Murdy dropped a surprise announcement revealing the presence of Obsession’s Nikki as part of the 2026 event. Now, Murdy is sharing more details on what to expect at Universal Destinations & Experiences’ popular after-hours event for that appearance — something he says came together “very late in the game for us in terms of our development.”

During that Aug. 8 panel, Murdy had teased the version of Nikki fans would see, noting it would be based on her final look in the Curry Barker film, which is (spoiler alert!) a climactic sequence that features both a Nikki (Inde Navarrette) whose agency and autonomy are corrupted by Bear’s (Michael Johnston) twisted wish and the real young woman trapped inside her own body as a result of the curse. For the event, Murdy confirms fans will interact with the version of Nikki before the “wish” is undone. 

At the time, Murdy described Nikki’s appearance as being like an interactive “Where’s Waldo?” allowing fans to engage with the character at various points throughout the park. HHN fans quickly connected the experience to the roaming Art the Clown as part of the 2025 event’s Terrifier collaboration. 

“It’s similar to Art last year, where we created this thing to activate areas of the theme park you would never expect to see a performer in. That included our retail store,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve identified a number of different locations where she can appear. You never know where you might encounter her.”

Unlike Art, who was performed by a team of “scare actors” for the first time in the event’s history, Nikki will be cast with traditional actors. Using dialogue scripted by Murdy and pulled “straight from Curry’s” film, these performers will also pick guests to engage with. “Normally, our scare actors don’t speak,” Murdy explains. “But it seemed really important to give Nikki the authentic voice Curry gave her in the film. So I took all of the dialogue from the film, and put together a creative treatment that I sent to Curry.”

If guests want to engage Nikki, they’ll need to check out USH’s social media, including its Instagram Story where a password will be shared that will trigger interactions with the performer. “It encourages our guests to find Nikki, and if they give her the password, they might get something,” he says.

That will include the One Wish Willow phone number Bear calls to attempt a modification of his wish. “I love the scene where Bear tries to call the customer service department, and when I was reading about the making of the film, I realized that Curry did that voice,” he says. “I’ve asked him to record a special message for our fans as if he were the customer service rep from One Wish Willow. So it’ll have a phone number on it, and they can call the number and get an exclusive message from Curry.”

As part of the park’s standard protocols with day and night characters, Nikki will have a production assistant working as her handler while she moves about, ensuring the safety of the performers and guests. Murdy has also used some of the movie’s lines in ways that allow the character and performer to control interactions with attendees. “Curry’s dialogue can be used to engage or disengage a guest,” Murdy says. “She has so many great lines like, ‘No, no, no, no’ from that dinner sequence, or she can say, ‘I thought we were having a nice time,’ and just turn and leave.” 

HHN Hollywood’s creative director says this last-minute event addition was initially inspired by a fan who sent him “a video of an interview that Curry did about how the Halloween season was coming, and how Nikki would be the No. 1 costume.” 

The conversation between Barker and the journalist would eventually gravitate to Halloween Horror Nights, whose mazes for many horror TV creators and filmmakers have become badges of honor, and markers of pop cultural relevance. So when Barker revealed he goes every year, Murdy thought, “We’ve got to do something.” After ringing Focus Features, they set up a call with Barker where Murdy pitched an idea based on something the breakout filmmaker had shared in that interview. 

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“He expressed a desire to see her in the event this year, and I combined it with what we used to do with the password to create a new activation for our fanbase,” he says. “He was very much in favor of the idea, and that’s what we’re in the middle of developing.”

Earlier this summer, Navarrette, who was recently announced as part of the cast for Marvel’s upcoming X-Men movie following her breakout role in Obsession, also hoped to see Nikki at HHN. In that interview, the actress shared her desire to come dressed as the character — something other actors, like Us star Lupita Nyong’o, have done as an official part of the event. 

When the event kicks off on Sept. 3, HHN aficionados will see how the Nikki experience also harkens back to the 2011 collaboration for “Eli Roth’s Hostel: Hunting Season” maze. “I was doing Hostel with Eli Roth, and Eli really wanted the girls that lured the guys into the ‘art show’ — which is just a torture chamber in Hostel — as part of the house. I’m like, ‘Well, they really need something to do, something interactive with the guests.’ Eli kept everything from Hostel, so he had all the business cards for Elite Hunting, which was the secret society in the film.” 

To generate the interactive elements, Murdy devised the password system, sharing it over X (then Twitter). “It was this Easter-eggy underground thing for the real big fans,” he tells THR. “I just started tweeting passwords every night and saying, ‘If you give the password to the girls in front of Hostel, you could get something in exchange.’” 

He would do it again in various forms over the years as part of collaborations tied to IP like Ghostbusters and Insidious. While he shelved it several years ago, eager event fans have frequently questioned when it would come back. The developing experience is part of a larger effort by HHN to stay on the rapidly expanding — and evolving — pulse of what’s happening in horror. And right now, says Murdy, what’s happening is a 24-year-old filmmaker who just turned his $750,000 budget indie film into a record-breaking box office hit. 

“It’s like New Hollywood in the late ’60s into the early ’70s, but now it’s the YouTube kids stepping into the arena,” Murdy says, while discussing the re-rise of horror the after-hours event has been able to capitalize on over the last decade. “I think it started with Get Out. That was the first moment where everybody was like, ‘Whoa.’ Sinners falls into that big time, but then there’s the double whammy of Obsession and Backrooms, which feel [tonally] different from Sinners and Get Out.”

For Murdy, tapping into the nuances, shifts, and trends within the genre is part of how the bicoastal event continues to expand and stay fresh. Alongside Nikki, HHN 2026 will feature the Evil Dead Burn house, which will include an animatronic talking head for the first time. Inside the “Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness” maze — a tribute house to the late rocker’s life and discography — fans will experience a “Crazy Train” and giant bat that bites the head off the Black Sabbath frontman. 

The Hellraiser queue will feature a giant puzzle box “like a pastiche painting with all the different levels of hell” and a center circle that “disappears while you’re waiting in line and electrifies, before you see Pinhead in a circle doing lines from the film,” according to Murdy. And for the first time, the Sinners house is turning to Water World stunt performers for a floating air stunt, which will use a flying rig to drop the Irish vampire Remick in long enough to hover as he delivers his now iconic “Sammie” line. 

Nikki, then, is just the latest way Halloween Horror Nights — also kicking off its 35th anniversary at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida on Aug. 28 — is “always pushing to see where we can take the brand next,” says Murdy. 

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