Kat Sandler's Yaga, starring Hudson Williams, premiered at TIFF in Toronto

Yaga first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, and a massive crowd gathered outside the Lightbox Theatre for the cast. Some people stood outside for 12 hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of the actors.

The Canadian supernatural horror mystery is developed by Crave and is a mid-budget indie production. Hudson Williams leads it, and the series also stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid and Clark Backo. It is Williams's first big role since Heated Rivalry, and the Hollanov hive, the fans of that show, is behind much of the attention the series has drawn. The source describes the series as halfway between a fairy tale and an erotic thriller. It follows a private investigator looking into the disappearance of a young fishery heir, and it includes a labyrinth of enigmatic suspects and, as the source puts it, ancient magic.

The series is based on the 2019 play by playwright Kat Sandler, which was first mounted at the Tarragon Theatre. Sandler was artistic director of Theatre Brouhaha from 2011 to 2018, a troupe that made theatre for people who don't like theatre. She said she wanted a female anti-hero who could be as entertaining as the male anti-heroes on television at the time, such as Dexter or Hannibal. Baba Yaga, the folklore figure who eats children and lives in a house on chicken legs, appealed to her because, in her words, "Witches and monsters are more interesting to me than heroes and princesses because they have actual conflict." She also linked the character to women becoming invisible as they age, using invisibility "as a weapon to wield against the real monsters in society."

Bell Media was looking for a new half-hour drama and approached producer Mackenzie Donaldson, who has worked with Sandler for more than 10 years. Sandler wrote the pilot and sent it to Bell in 2023, around the time her play Wildwoman was staged at Soulpepper. The series was green-lit in summer 2025, and Sandler wrote the TV script that summer and into the fall. Pre-production started in January, shooting finished in April, and the show premiered at TIFF in September. Sandler called it "a very fast process."

Sandler said Williams joined the cast on the strength of the script, as his Heated Rivalry profile was rising. He plays two roles, one of them a new character who is a lookalike of the other. Sandler described him as "an actor's actor" and said he did impressions on set that made the cast laugh.

The material does not give a release date, streaming platform or episode count, or an attendance figure for the Lightbox crowd.