Toronto After Dark — an annual horror, thriller and sci-fi themed film festival — has postponed its 2024 event to next year.
Originally scheduled to begin next month, the programming has now been pushed to the week of Oct. 15, 2025 and will be held at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto.
The primary reason behind the postponement is the festival’s founder and director’s ongoing battle with cancer, according to a statement on the festival’s website.
Adam Lopez said the festival has been “a source of immense joy” for him since he started it in 2006, but had to make the difficult decision to postpone this year’s festival after his health took a “turn for the worse.”
Despite being diagnosed with Stage 4 head and neck cancer three years ago, Lopez was still able to organize the film festival in 2022 and 2023, adding that encouragement from the community was a source of strength for him as he surpassed his initial one-year prognosis.
“The opportunity to engage with the passionate fan community, which has become like a second family, has been truly rewarding,” he wrote in a media release about the festival’s postponement.
In addition to rescheduling the events, Lopez said he will be permanently stepping down as the festival’s director at the end of the year to fully focus on his health.
“Rest assured, as founder, I’ll be carefully entrusting the future of our wonderful event to a trusted familiar pair of hands — my fellow founding Toronto After Dark staff member Peter Kuplowsky,” Lopez wrote.
Kuplowsky has worked on several other film events and has led the “Midnight Madness” programming at the Toronto International Film Festival since 2017. He will adopt the role of festival legacy director and work alongside longtime festival staff to continue Toronto After Dark.
Though his role in the festival will be reduced, Lopez said he will be acting as a senior adviser and plans to stay involved in the event, possibly even walking the red carpet on occasion.
“Toronto After Dark will stay true to its popular brand of being a fun, affordable, unpretentious, accessible, compact film showcase event, that theatrically screens crowd-pleasing genre films from around the world, in front of packed, delighted audiences in a prime downtown location!”
