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Devil May Cry - Trailer Debut: The Gates of Hell Open April 3rd: "In this animated adaptation of the popular Capcom game and from the vision of Adi Shankar, sinister forces are at play to open the portal between the human and demon realms. In the middle of it all is Dante, an orphaned demon-hunter-for-hire, unaware that the fate of both worlds hangs around his neck."

Showrunner: Adi Shankar Animation Studio: Studio Mir Cast: Johnny Yong Bosch (Dante), Scout Taylor-Compton (Mary), Hoon Lee (White Rabbit), Kevin Conroy (VP Baines), Chris Coppola (Enzo)

Learn more at: www.netflix.com/devilmaycry

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Shudder Announces Acquisition of Home Invasion Horror Push: "Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thrillers and the supernatural, today announced the acquisition of Push, from the filmmakers of acclaimed indie thriller The Boy Behind The Door and Djinn, David Charbonier and Justin Powell. The highly anticipated film,...

New York indies Cartuna and Dweck Productions have acquired North American rights for Grace Glowicki’s thriller Dead Lover as the first acquisition of their newly announced joint distribution venture Cartuna x Dweck.

The partners acquired the film out of SXSW where the Canadian thriller made its Texas debut after world premiering at Sundance in the Midnight Section.

In between times, the film has also played the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Göteborg Film Festival, with forthcoming stops at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans and the Los Angeles Festival of Movies.

Glowicki also stars in Dead Lover as a lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses. When she finally meets her dream man (Ben Petrie), their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.

Dead Lover...

“It’s alive!” — as the mad scientists would say. Grace Glowicki’s grotesque, 16mm-shot romance “Dead Lover” has been acquired for North American distribution by Cartuna and Dweck Productions, operating under a new venture Cartuna x Dweck. The deal comes after the film’s selection at SXSW, following a premiere at Sundance in January.

“We firmly believe that we are at the early stages of a historic creative movement,” says James Belfer, founder and CEO of Cartuna. “Inventive, boundary-pushing storytellers need more distribution support now than ever. This collective of producers has opted to take matters into our own hands and it’s our sincere hope that it will inspire others to do the same.”

“What Grace and her collaborators have dug up from their creative depths is like nothing I’ve ever seen before and we are so honored to be a part of this infinitely imaginative team,” said Hannah Dweck,...

Cartuna x Dweck, the new distribution venture formed by Cartuna and Dweck Productions, has acquired North American rights to Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover following screenings at SXSW.

This is the first all-rights buy from the new company, which plans a theatrical release and aims to champion bold visions and emerging voices. The deal comes less than two weeks after Oscar-winningAnora director Sean Baker issued a clarion call urging support of independent filmmaking and the theatre-going experience.

Cartuna launched a distribution arm last year and found success with the Sitges and Morbido slapstick fantasy comedy Hundreds Of Beavers, which grossed...

In the first sale of the SXSW Film Festival, Grace Glowicki’s Midnight movie “Dead Lover” has found theatrical distribution from a new boutique distribution venture, Cartuna x Dweck, which is a partnership between physical media company Cartuna and Dweck Productions, the company behind films such as “Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point” and “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.”

Cartuna x Dweck acquired North American rights to “Dead Lover” following its Texas premiere at SXSW, and this will be the first release from the new venture, as the two companies have quietly been building an initial slate of films to be announced later this year. No release date for “Dead Lover” was announced.

“Dead Lover” is Glowicki’s sophomore feature, which she wrote, directed, and starred in, and it made its premiere in the Midnight section of this year’s Sundance film Festival. The film is a campy,...

"They said it would never happen," the account for "Hundreds of Beavers" posted on March 4, 2025. "Long live indie cinema! $150,000 budget and a dream." When Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews debuted their slapstick comedy about an applejack salesman facing off against hundreds (possibly thousands) of beavers in an attempt to win the heart of a pelt merchant's daughter at Fantastic Fest in 2022, it's doubtful that anyone involved could have predicted the Cinderella story that was in their future. Despite the overwhelming praise that came out of the fest (including Matt Donato's glowing review for /Film), Cheslik and Tews rejected the distribution offers that came their way and instead chose the path of self-distribution. They bet on themselves, and it paid off handsomely.

"Hundreds of Beavers" was shot in rural Wisconsin and Michigan across 12 weeks in the bitter, north-Midwest winter. As anyone who hears the phrase "lake effect" and...

One of the most unlikely box-office heroes now has the milestone to back it up. “Hundreds of Beavers,” the black-and-white, silent, slapstick comedy released into theaters without formal distribution, surpassed $1 million at the box office on a budget of just $150,000.

“They said it would never happen,” the film tweeted on Tuesday. “Long live indie cinema! $150,000 budget and a dream. And thank you to the fans who got us here. Finally, thank you to our theatrical booker who has been independently booking indie cinema for decades. She’s a real soldier of cinema. We got really lucky we found her.”

“Back when we hit $100,000 at the Box Office we were told that one hundred thousand is the new one million for truly independent releases, so we popped the champagne,” “Hundreds of Beavers” lead producer Kurt Ravenwood said in a statement to IndieWire. “At this point we are so out of champagne...

There’s an old gold vault just outside of Washington, D.C., that holds the kind of (national) treasures most film nerds can only dream of seeing. But when a film screens in the Library of Congress’s theater, the filmmakers can get a tour of the Library’s vault. This is how “Hundreds of Beavers” producer Kurt Ravenwood ended up getting to see one of the original prints of Edwin Stanton Porter’s early silent Western, “The Great Train Robbery.”

Now, director Mike Cheslik’s murder-fueled homage to everything from silent slapstick to Nintendo side-scroller platform games has a film print of its own. As with most things “Hundreds of Beavers” related, what started as a joke among the filmmaking team ended up being followed through on quite seriously.

“We made this film very cheaply and part of the way we made it cheaply was by having the entire workflow be [in] 1080p.

The hot new path to indie film distribution may not run through New York or Los Angeles.

Indie filmmakers are taking their films on the road. Often, they target specific regions like the American Midwest or South. These traveling tours may feature live components — a Q&a, a concert, or a performance. Controlling your content sounds very 21st-century, but it’s literally one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Vaudeville-like tours have been a part of the film industry since the 1920s, when a project’s physical filmstock would travel from city to city in order to screen for a limited number of weeks. Movies were paired with overtures and intermissions rather than short subjects or promotional trailers. Some of these elements persisted through the 1960s, but the road shows of today are not an exercise in nostalgia or in corporate strategy; they’re a roadmap to success.

“For...

Something that The A.V. Club noted in our breakdown of the best films of 2024 is that, as the industry becomes more polarized between massive too-big-to-fail franchise films and all-but-ignored indies, seeking out good movies is more and more becoming the audience’s responsibility. In a corporate landscape where intellectual property...

Hannah Peterson’s film “The Graduates” was stuck in limbo. Its cast included John Cho, Chloé Zhao was an executive producer, it premiered at Tribeca 2023 to excellent reviews… and, it had no distributor. But it did have a fan.

Caryn Coleman, a film programmer who runs non-profit The Future of Film Is Female, was frustrated to see Peterson’s film go unreleased. So she decided to release it herself. Coleman used her connections to land “The Graduates” a New York screening November 1 with expansion to follow, crafting the release strategy in tandem with Peterson.

But The Future of Film Is Female is not technically a distributor and Coleman hasn’t quit her day job. “The Graduates” won’t see many screens; it may be one of just two films Coleman’s company releases all year. Coleman doesn’t even expect to make back the film’s very modest budget. But...

Next Thursday, October 17, over Zoom at 2:00 Pm Eastern, Jon Reiss — a longtime Filmmaker contributor and author of the new and highly recommended (and distribution-focused) 8 Above Substack — and I will be hosting a distribution case study on DIY hit Hundreds of Beavers with producer Kurt Ravenwood. We’re going to investigate how the Hundreds of Beavers became a breakout success that grossed over $500K at the theatrical box office — more than tripling their production budget of $150K. Kurt will reveal how their team identified, mobilized and grew their audience, how they eventized their theatrical release and created […]

The post Register Now for Free Hundreds of Beavers Distribution Case Study first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Next Thursday, October 17, over Zoom at 2:00 Pm Eastern, Jon Reiss — a longtime Filmmaker contributor and author of the new and highly recommended (and distribution-focused) 8 Above Substack — and I will be hosting a distribution case study on DIY hit Hundreds of Beavers with producer Kurt Ravenwood. We’re going to investigate how the Hundreds of Beavers became a breakout success that grossed over $500K at the theatrical box office — more than tripling their production budget of $150K. Kurt will reveal how their team identified, mobilized and grew their audience, how they eventized their theatrical release and created […]

The post Register Now for Free Hundreds of Beavers Distribution Case Study first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Dark Lord is rising, and the battle for Middle-earth is about to begin. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power returns to our screens this summer for a second season that sees the stakes higher than ever – Sauron has revealed himself, Galadriel is out for redemption, war is coming, and there are some of those titular rings in play.

Empire has a giant, world-exclusive look at the show’s return in our brand new issue, on sale and hitting newsstands from Thursday 4 July – but for now, here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power

One show to rule them all – as we prepare to return to Middle-earth, Empire goes on the brand new UK set of Prime Video’s Tolkien fantasy epic, speaking to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, stars Charlie Vickers, Morfydd Clark, Sophia Nomvete and Daniel Weyman,...

Fantasy horror Hundreds Of Beavers is to be released in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by Lightbulb Film Distribution, following a festival run including Fantastic Fest, Fantasia and Sitges.

The film is US director Mike Cheslik’s feature debut, and is a dialogue-free homage to silent cinema about a drunken19th century cider salesman whose stock is ruined by hungry beavers and tries to recover his fortune by becoming North America’s greatest fur trapper.

Toronto-based genre specialist Raven Banner has international sales rights. Lightbulb will release the films in UK and Irish cinemas on July 9.

Ryland Brickson Cole Tews...

In October 2018 while sharing beers in a frigid Milwaukee bar with his soon-to-be leading man Ryland Tews, director, visual effects artist and editor of “Hundreds of Beavers” Mike Cheslik conceived the film based on three simple elements: his After Effects skills, familiarity with snow and Tews’ uncanny ability to fall over.

“We knew that the image of a guy in a mascot costume falling down was fundamentally funny,” Cheslik explains. “And if that is in every shot, even if our gags aren’t working well, we have the fundamental comedy of mascot animal. Is that right, Ryland?”

“Absolutely,” Tews says in response. “We just wanted to make a movie that looked like nothing else.”

Ryland Tews and Mike Cheslik on the set of “Hundreds of Beavers.”

This would begin the five-and-a-half-year journey to the theatrical release of one of 2024’s most successful indie films. Entirely self-distributed, “Hundreds of Beavers” has...