The legendary horror label is releasing a new monster movie from filmmaker Casey Walker that has been a very, very long time coming - Walker first came up with the idea back in 2011, spent two years getting the script together and then spent another decade trying to actually get the movie made.
Ithaqua drops us into 1800s Canada, where an isolated fur-trading outpost is already struggling with dwindling supplies and brutal winter conditions before something considerably worse starts hunting the people trapped there.
According to Walker, this is the first new monster Hammer has backed in almost 60 years, where the film takes inspiration from August Derleth's Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker from the Cthulhu Mythos, and combines that mythology with wendigo lore and the real history surrounding Indigenous communities and the fur trade.
Walker and co-writers Pascal Trottier and Peter Scott Vicaire developed the mythology together, with Vicaire bringing his own First Nations background to the historical and cultural elements, and Walker has also explained that they deliberately wanted to create their own version rather than simply reproduce Lovecraft's mythology on screen.
The Real Cold Was Apparently Horrendous
The cast shot the movie at Fort William Historical Park in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is where Walker grew up, and the winter they shot in was quite brutal - Walker says the warmest day they experienced was around -35°C, while the coldest night reached -54°C, so the breath you see in the movie is real.
Walker has also mentioned the makeup cracking, blood rigs freezing, propane heating systems struggling and people losing feeling in their fingers, and one particularly ridiculous sequence involved Aaron Poole fighting in the snow while essentially naked, with the temperature dropping to around -50°C with wind chill.
Walker wanted the characters to look genuinely starved and exhausted, and Luke Hemsworth, Kevin Durand and Michael Pitt reportedly fasted for weeks before filming, with Hemsworth losing around 35 pounds.
Teaser Trailer
When Does Ithaqua Come Out?
Ithaqua had its world premiere at Tubi FrightFest in London on August 29, 2026, and Hammer is currently planning a theatrical release, with the full release expected in early 2027.
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