Image Nation, Spooky Pictures on Horror Films, ‘The Plague’ in Cannes

High concept, low budget, straight-forward creative lens – that is how Emirati studio Image Nation Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles-based genre label Spooky Pictures target movies under their partnership that is bringing one of its features to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.

No need to mince words either. “The creative mandate is: cool shit,” producer and Spooky co-founder Steven Schneider (Pet Sematary, Paranormal Activity, Insidious) tells THR. “We also always just look for things that are original and will surprise us,” adds producer and Spooky co-founder Roy Lee (It, The Ring, A Minecraft Movie). “The guiding light when we start out is that we want to make a movie that somebody thinks is their favorite movie of that year or of all time.”

The duo found a partner in crime in Image Nation CEO Ben Ross, bringing together what Schneider calls three “historical horror buffs” on a mission.

“Steven and I had been threatening to do this for probably 15-plus years, and the three of us have known each other for a really long time,” recalls Ross. “So when the two of them discussed launching something together, it was pretty easy just to go and do it, because we know genre films and like the business.”

This year, the dynamic trio for the first time ever hit the Croisette with a movie premiering in the Cannes selection, namely New York-based Charlie Polinger’s debut feature The Plague, which debuted in the Un Certain Regard section on Friday. Its cast features an ensemble of new faces, including Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin and Kenny Rasmussen, and Joel Edgerton (Boy Erased, Black Mass, Loving), who also has a producer credit on the film via his banner Five Henrys Productions, along with additional producers Hellcat and The Space Program.

“At an all-boys water polo camp, a socially anxious 12-year-old is pulled into a cruel tradition targeting an outcast with an illness they call ‘The Plague’,” reads the ominous synopsis. “But as the lines between game and reality blur, he fears the joke might be hiding something real.”

Edgerton was already attached to the project when the partners boarded it. His involvement as a producer mirrors the starring and producing roles that David Dastmalchian had on the Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes-directed Image Nation-Spooky horror box office hit Late Night With the Devil, which in its prologue is framed as a documentary investigating an unexplained event that occurred on Halloween night 1977 during a live broadcast of a late-night talk show, and which delivered IFC Films’ highest-grossing opening weekend ever. Dastmalchian and the companies are now replicating his double duty on their recently unveiled new feature, The Shepherd.

“That dual role is incentivizing,” explains Schneider. “Nobody’s getting rich up front on these movies. We are, I think, more than fair for low-budget movies in terms of what we are prepared to pay people. But we are trying desperately to keep the above the line as minimal as possible.”

Adds Ross: “We also try to make all the actors feel like they are real partners. They are doing these things for significantly less of a payday than they can normally get. Everything goes on screen when we design the financial plans for our films. We treat the actors as partners, so they are significant stakeholders in the back end. We all win together, or nobody wins.”

How else does The Plague fit into the partnership’s business model? “The model is basically $5 million net budgets or below, big concept, well executed, directors that we believe in and want to bet on – whether they are first-timers or established, and not cast contingent in the usual way,” summarizes Schneider.

The three veterans trust their taste and instincts and all use words such as “different,” “fresh,” “original,” and “fun” when discussing what kind of projects they look for. Explains Lee: “If we read the first act of a script and could predict everything that is going to happen, it’s actually a movie we don’t want to do. We want the movies that veer in different directions.”

The content can originate from anywhere. “As far as the business perspective, we operate under the premise that content is global,” Ross tells THR. “So we make it for a global audience, whether it’s in Arabic, which a lot of Image Nation stuff is, or in English or Spanish,” like one project currently in the works.

One fundamental thought the partners all share is that creative, artistic, and financial considerations are not mutually exclusive. “Our movies can be artistic and commercial at the same time,” emphasized Schneider. “They just have to be scary. They have to be spooky.”

Is there a slate goal, such as a certain number of movies the three target per year? “We don’t have a set goal. We just judge things as they come in,” emphasizes Lee. “When we love something, we want to try and make it.” That has meant that, in contrast to most studios’ operations, the partnership has made all movies it has decided to develop.

One thing that makes The Plague different is that it will be the partnership’s first film to be sold upfront, with that process starting at the Cannes market, where UTA and Cinetic will be co-selling the U.S. rights and AGC International handling the rest of the world.  

Chloe Okuno‘s psychological thriller Watcher was the team’s first feature. Among their upcoming films are Oddity director Damian McCarthy’s supernatural horror movie Hokum, starring Adam Scott (Severance), which is currently in post, Randall Okita’s Menace, starring Isabel May (1883), and Archangel, written and directed by Bryan Edward Hill and starring Conor Leslie (Titans, Man in the High Castle) Greg Hovanessian (Cardinal), and Alyshia Ochse (True Detective).

Given the entertainment industry’s various issues, what is a key hurdle for the Image Nation-Spooky team? “The biggest challenge is finding great projects,” highlights Lee. “Because there are so many things out there in the marketplace and there is a lot of competition, you just have to be able to discern the ones that will rise above the others and that will be great.”

One promise that can make a difference is trust in the creatives and their vision. “We really try to be completely collaborative with our filmmakers,” says Ross. “We want to show them that we believe in them. We really don’t dictate a lot. We are all going to work together.”