Halloween Horror Nights 31 (UOR) - Speculation & Rumors

[Eckert]

Those two tweets he's done have done more for the event than months of announcements.

You mean finding out they're gonna sell tickets for this year's HHN doesn't do it for you?

 

[Clive]

They’re not pulling it because he’s the one who owns the IP.

If anything, this demonstrates his enthusiasm! He's clearly stoked to be part of the event and can't wait to talk about it.

 

[Killer Klown]

Honestly his enthusiasm has made me warm up to him getting a house quite a lot.

 

[HHN Maddux]

Manifesting for Chupacabra to be have the same intensity level that AAWiL 2013 did.

Also, just now realizing... Which Chupacabra is this house referring to? The coyote with terrible mange, or the... really bizarre red-eye creature.

 

[Crowboy]

Honestly his enthusiasm has made me warm up to him getting a house quite a lot.

I was already pretty glad since I believe it could mean more musical acts getting involved at the event, but seeing just how much he’s posting about it gets me excited.
But I bet getting in that house will take some stranger thing like queues. Perhaps even worse

 

[TheCodeMan95]

I was already pretty glad since I believe it could mean more musical acts getting involved at the event, but seeing just how much he’s posting about it gets me excited.
But I bet getting in that house will take some stranger thing like queues. Perhaps even worse

I'm interested to see what the location for the house will be - because they'll need to prepare for massive queues for it.

 

[queenmetroid]

A good thing to remember is when it comes to IP's and their contracts, it usually boils down to keeping the owners of the IP happy. We've seen IP houses get pulled due to making the owners unhappy in one way or another. (eg. Scream in 2015, Beetlejuice (in Hollywood) last year etc.)
Now in the unique case of an owner openly mentioning HHN, there's no issue there. In fact, it's a bit of a win-win for all involved since that's free advertising right there from the IP owner themself.

I would offer a slightly different take here. I used to work for a very well-known company and we collaborated with a popular celebrity on a highly anticipated product. Said celebrity decided to make a social media post about said product prior to the official announcement. This was absolutely not OK, and a lot of people from different departments were involved in damage control.

Now it's entirely possible that Universal genuinely doesn't care or this was entirely planned. However, based on my personal experience dealing with leaks, I do not see that as being the case. I would suggest that if was indeed a leak (and it is a leak, just not the way we would typically think of leaks), then Universal is probably scrambling a bit to figure out how to address it. In the same way IP owners are unhappy about leaks because they tarnish the brand somewhat, an unplanned celebrity leaking something ahead of official word hurts a company's ability to control any narrative or consumer expectations. Look, we're superfans here. We know The Weeknd is coming and have known that. However, your average The Weeknd fan doesn't. They may not even know HHN is a thing. There's probably only a small overlap between HHN fans and The Weeknd fans. We have reason to believe that announcements will be later this year because of various reasons, so this could very well be messing up Universal's timing. They don't want hype to peak too early, and this could be creating an issue in their minds. If marketing isn't ready or call centers don't have memos with answers, Universal has to quickly do a bunch of things to deal with the fallout, and that's just not something we are privy to from the outside. This also was likely spelled out in a contract with his lawyers, publicists, and marketing, which means there are legal issues surrounding it as well.

Will Universal do anything? As Legacy said, no. The Weeknd owns the brand and he's not going to pull it. However, I would suspect it's very unlikely Universal is happy about this if they didn't know about it in advance. While these kind of unplanned things can build hype and may even work out, they do have consequences internally and we can't automatically assume Universal is happy about it.

 

[Freak]

If the Weeknd is as excited as we think we are about him being creatively involved, hey this could be the surprise hit of the event!

 

[Clive]

I would offer a slightly different take here. I used to work for a very well-known company and we collaborated with a popular celebrity on a highly anticipated product. Said celebrity decided to make a social media post about said product prior to the official announcement. This was absolutely not OK, and a lot of people from different departments were involved in damage control.

Now it's entirely possible that Universal genuinely doesn't care or this was entirely planned. However, based on my personal experience dealing with leaks, I do not see that as being the case. I would suggest that if was indeed a leak (and it is a leak, just not the way we would typically think of leaks), then Universal is probably scrambling a bit to figure out how to address it. In the same way IP owners are unhappy about leaks because they tarnish the brand somewhat, an unplanned celebrity leaking something ahead of official word hurts a company's ability to control any narrative or consumer expectations. Look, we're superfans here. We know The Weeknd is coming and have known that. However, your average The Weeknd fan doesn't. They may not even know HHN is a thing. There's probably only a small overlap between HHN fans and The Weeknd fans. We have reason to believe that announcements will be later this year because of various reasons, so this could very well be messing up Universal's timing. They don't want hype to peak too early, and this could be creating an issue in their minds. If marketing isn't ready or call centers don't have memos with answers, Universal has to quickly do a bunch of things to deal with the fallout, and that's just not something we are privy to from the outside. This also was likely spelled out in a contract with his lawyers, publicists, and marketing, which means there are legal issues surrounding it as well.

Will Universal do anything? As Legacy said, no. The Weeknd owns the brand and he's not going to pull it. However, I would suspect it's very unlikely Universal is happy about this if they didn't know about it in advance. While these kind of unplanned things can build hype and may even work out, they do have consequences internally and we can't automatically assume Universal is happy about it.

Everything you're saying here is true - I'm sure Universal (and maybe some other IP holders who have a stake in what gets announced and when) are not happy with the comments. But the original question was about whether The Weeknd would pull the rights - and he clearly won't, given the unusual situation.

(It wasn't so long ago, by the way, that Alice Cooper inadvertently leaked his mazes on both coasts in a random, livestreamed interview well before either iteration was announced.)

 

[DinosaursRoar]

Who else would like a Hazbin Hotel haunted house to happen? There's a great concept for that idea made by Victor Boo's (now named Wacky Ball) here (I know this was made before the Covid pandemic, but it's an interesting idea): Hazbin Hotel (Haunted House Orlando)

 

[hhn28andbeyond]

Who else would like a Hazbin Hotel haunted house to happen? There's a great concept for that idea made by Victor Boo's (now named Wacky Ball) here (I know this was made before the Covid pandemic, but it's an interesting idea): Hazbin Hotel (Haunted House Orlando)

Given the shows lack of popularity (and quality :/), hard doubt

 

[ChaseTuff]

Everything you're saying here is true - I'm sure Universal (and maybe some other IP holders who have a stake in what gets announced and when) are not happy with the comments. But the original question was about whether The Weeknd would pull the rights - and he clearly won't, given the unusual situation.

(It wasn't so long ago, by the way, that Alice Cooper inadvertently leaked his mazes on both coasts in a random, livestreamed interview well before either iteration was announced.)

Also it’d be quite foolish from Universal’s perspective to, a year after they missed out on working with a Grammy Award winning artist due to factors out of their control, cut the new Grammy Award winning artist they’re working with because he, well, did some “off schedule advertising / marketing” I guess we can call it.

 

[queenmetroid]

Everything you're saying here is true - I'm sure Universal (and maybe some other IP holders who have a stake in what gets announced and when) are not happy with the comments. But the original question was about whether The Weeknd would pull the rights - and he clearly won't, given the unusual situation.

(It wasn't so long ago, by the way, that Alice Cooper inadvertently leaked his mazes on both coasts in a random, livestreamed interview well before either iteration was announced.)

Oh, yeah, I was not saying The Weeknd will pull the plug. He absolutely won't (why would he?) and Universal won't "do" anything so that he isn't tempted to try to do so out of spite. The only thing that will absolutely happen is his lawyers and publicist will quietly have a serious conversation with him along the lines of, "Hey, if you want to get brand collaborations, you need to respect the contracts or there will be less of them."

I was generally addressing the idea here (and in the Hollywood thread) about why Universal would care. What we may see as free publicity is much more complicated than that and brands don't like when it happens.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

Is there a possibility where Universal just said to The Weekend "Hey, maybe drop a couple hints on Twitter.."?

 

[Legacy]

Is there a possibility where Universal just said to The Weekend "Hey, maybe drop a couple hints on Twitter.."?

Universal doesn’t deal in “hints” that aren’t approved.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

Universal doesn’t deal in “hints” that aren’t approved.

So there's no scenario that would exist where Universal would tell The Weeknd's reps "Hey, if he wants to hint towards HHN that would be fine with us."

Advertising can't hurt, right?

 

[Legacy]

So there's no scenario that would exist where Universal would tell The Weeknd's reps "Hey, if he wants to hint towards HHN that would be fine with us."

Advertising can't hurt, right?

Doubtful. The rights lawyers engaging with The Weeknd’s reps are not discussing marketing with him. It’s not on their radar. The only engagement Marketing likely has with his team is “Do you approve of this graphic and copy.”

 

[jseal777]

Doubtful. The rights lawyers engaging with The Weeknd’s reps are not discussing marketing with him. It’s not on their radar. The only engagement Marketing likely has with his team is “Do you approve of this graphic and copy.”

we always underestimate how truly boring lawyers are*

*recovering paralegal

 

[jarmor]

Some of you are making it seem as if he flat out came out and said i gotta house at HHN this year! It has more meaning to us as we have already speculated and due to someone ELSE breaking their NDA we discovered he will have a house. Why isn't slash getting this type of backlash for his post??? I guarantee the average, no the biggest weekend fan still has no clue about HHN or has even heard of it lol

 

[jorgerr96]

It is known The Weeknd is VERY demanding about everything. In 2016 he was one of the two headliners for Formula 1 in Austin, but he was the Sunday post-race headliner (afternoon slot), while Taylor Swift was the Saturday night headliner. Rumor says Weeknd didn't want to play while the sun would be out (4-5 pm) so he backed out and the organizers had Usher & The Roots replace him. In 2017 he was meant to headline Lollapalooza, but his name was not the first one on the poster. He backed out last minute right before lineup drop. They brought him back for 2018 and of course his name was the first one on the poster (ahead of Bruno Mars). He is pulling the exact same bs right now with Coachella with asking for the same $$$ that they were paying Kanye West before he dropped out, Coachella was going to pay Weeknd less cause he is not as big as Ye, but I guess Coachella is desperate with the event starting next Friday that they just decided to pay him.

If The Weeknd house is not the first one announced I will be incredibly surprised. I'd expect his house to have a "headliner" placement on all general posters and promo as well.