The production wing of the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, 88th Street Productions, made a major announcement recently when they spread the news that they were working in collaboration with Epic Pictures and its Horror imprint Dread. This first look deal on television and film development projects will bring Dread and 88th Street Productions together to develop horror, thriller and other genre content to the masses, featuring some of the incredible talent from HollyShorts filmmakers.
88th Street has already been busy, working on features with Stefan Dezil (who made shorts such as Thirst and Ecstasy) and is fast-tracking a horror series with David Dastmalchian, the actor/director/writer whose made appearances in The Suicide Squad, as well as penning the Dark Horse Comics series Count Crowley.
Dread will also be serving as the headliner for the keynote conversation at the 18th Annual HollyShorts Film Festival, which will run from August 11th-18th at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, and online at BitPix. Dread will also be sponsoring the Horror block of the festival.
Pictured left to right: Kalani Dreimanis (Epic Pictures), Theo Dumont, Steven Adams, Dan Sheldon (all of 88th Street Productions), Yulissa Morales-Silva (Epic Pictures)
The director of international sales at Epic Pictures, Kalani Dreimanis, was thrilled by the news, saying to Screen Daily:
“I am excited to continue this partnership and begin developing projects with 88th Street and the wonderful talent from the festival.”
– Kalani Dreimanis, to Screen Daily
Also chiming in were 88th Street co-Founder Steven Adams, who added:
“This collaboration with the incredible team of Epic Pictures and Dread is the perfect evolution of an already successful partnership. We are all dedicated to elevating new voices and exploring fresh iterations of classic genres.”
– Steven Adams, to Screen Daily
Co-founders of 88th Street productions and of the HollyShorts Film Festival also noted that:
“For 18 years we’ve fostered an extraordinary international community of award-winning artists and we are pleased to offer them this exciting new opportunity with Epic Pictures and Dread.”
Theo Dumont and Daniel Sol, to Screen Daily
This is a huge win for both companies, as well as for the HollyShorts Film Festival, who has no shortage of notoriety. Just last year alone, the festival had six films qualify for the Academy awards, including two winners in Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye and Ben Proudfoot’s Queen of Basketball.
The deal was helped along by by attorney Clifford Lo for 88th Street Productions and Dan Sheldon of Alta Global Media.
This is an exciting announcement! Be sure to check back soon for more news!
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