'Billions' Star Officially Leads a Real-Time Vampire Thriller Set After World War II in First Look

Cinema is rife with depictions of World War II and the lives of everyday people during the costliest conflict in history, but the period in the direct aftermath can be just as intriguing. The world was left to pick up the pieces from the destruction and bloodshed as order began to shift, beginning an era of globalization and the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as parallel superpowers destined to collide. A new independent thriller, Red Ink, will soon explore that era from the perspective of a newsroom navigating a complicated media landscape. However, it comes with a vampiric twist.

Red Ink follows the editor of a New York newspaper in the Big Apple, played by Billions star Toby Leonard Moore, who finds himself tasked with crafting the nation’s response to a mysterious affliction that’s begun sweeping the globe. However, in trying to deliver the truth to the people, he finds himself caught between the powers that be. Constructing the message becomes a process that he quickly learns may be even more monstrous than what’s happening in the world around them, as he faces pressure from all sides. It’s billed as an interrogation of “media propaganda, institutional power, and exploitation” under extraordinary circumstances in a time that’s about to be rocked by McCarthyism.

In anticipation of its international premiere in the Directors’ Debuts Competition at Camerimage 2026 in November, Collider is excited to share a first look at Red Ink, focused on Moore. Dressed in a period-appropriate outfit with stacks of paper and folders across his desk and a cigarette in hand, he looks the part of an overworked journalist facing a gargantuan task. Adding to the moody and tense nature of the film is the dim lighting in his office, creating a sense that darkness is creeping all around him in one form or another. While he was a regular presence on Billions, Moore brings a varied resume to the role, having appeared in the first John Wick and David Fincher‘s Mank, with his last film appearance being Jon Bell‘s 2024 folk horror, The Moogai.

Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath
your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what
it would leave behind.

Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you
to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever
won that particular argument.

• Freddy is horror’s cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot
  guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
• You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your
  own head is where this does its damage.
• These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose
  because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
• You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.

Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the
person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.

• Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you
  describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
• You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You
  know that feeling from real life too.
• The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you
  have met those adults.
• By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.

Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost
certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.

• Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be
  somebody who was at the party.
• You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the
  same way you watch films.
• The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are
  the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
• Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.

Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people
asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.

• The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary
  room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
• Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than
  personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
• This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are
  the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
• Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one
  standing in the hallway.

Who Is Behind ‘Red Ink’?

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    Image via Incline Studios</figure>