Chiller Going Dark As NBCUniversal Axes Horror-Centric Channel

Chiller is soon to be dead. NBCUniversal confirmed to Deadline today that its 10-year-old horror-fied cable channel, which reaches about 40M homes, will be put on ice for good at year’s end after struggling to secure carriage deals with the likes of Dish, Verizon and others.

We hear that NBCU doesn’t plan to pull the plug on any of its other nets and that no staffers will be impacted when Chiller goes cold on New Year’s Day.

Since launching in March 2007, Chiller has aired mostly horror films and older TV fare along with one original scripted series, the Canadian horror anthology Slasher, which premiered in March 2016. Chiller also aired original reality fare and films such as Lifeforce and Siren, along with such off-net genre series as 666 Park Avenue, Being Human, Fear Factor, Tales From the Crypt, The Twilight Zone and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Last year, Eli Roth’s Crypt TV debuted a series of short horror films on the network. Slice of Summer featured mini-pics by filmmakers from around the world including John William Ross’ The Thing in the Apartment, James Webber’s The Prey and the McCoubrey brothers’ The Grey Matter.