Director Eli Roth has launched his own production and distribution company, The Horror Section, to release genre films without the creative constraints of the traditional studio system, following a difficult experience making Lionsgate's $120 million Borderlands adaptation. The company's first release is his unrated splatter film Ice Cream Man, opening wide via Iconic Events Releasing on 7 August, a project that spent more than two decades in development limbo because its gory premise made financing difficult to secure.

Roth says the wide theatrical release of an unrated film became viable after Terrifier 3 opened to around $20 million, prompting major chains including AMC, Regal and Cinemark to agree to screen unrated titles. Co-written with childhood friend Noah Belson after the success of Roth's 2002 debut Cabin Fever, the film centres on an ice cream man whose treats turn children into killers, and features a 30-minute school massacre sequence involving around 100 child actors, inspired by the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. Roth also reflects on lessons Hollywood might take from this summer's low-budget horror hits Obsession and Backrooms, which together grossed nearly $900 million worldwide.