Neon acquires horror film “Shelby Oaks” from YouTuber Chris Stuckmann

Neon has acquired the rights to “Shelby Oaks,” a found-footage horror film (think “The Blair Witch Project”) that marks the directorial debut of YouTuber Chris Stuckmann.

Stuckmann is known for his YouTube film review channel, which has over 2 million subscribers, but his debut film came about with a Kickstarter campaign in 2022. Stuckmann raised $1.39 million in less than a month, making it the most funded horror film of all time on Kickstarter.

Shelby Oaks follows Mia as she desperately searches for her sister Riley, who mysteriously disappeared in the final volume of her detective series Paranormal Paranoids. The characters are themselves YouTubers in the mid-2000s who, in the course of their investigation, discover that there is a paranormal power that stretches back to their childhood.

Neon has secured worldwide rights to “Shelby Oaks” ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Fantasia Festival on Saturday. Stuckmann has been promoting the film heavily on his YouTube channel and is offering pre-order merchandise and behind-the-scenes information on the filmmaking process as an educational tool for other aspiring filmmakers making films for the first time. The distributor plans a theatrical release in the U.S. and will handle international distribution of the film.

You can watch a trailer for his Kickstarter campaign below and the film’s website here.

“Shelby Oaks” stars Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III and Sarah Durn. Stuckmann also produced the film with Aaron B. Koontz, Ashleigh Snead and Cameron Burns for Paper Street Pictures.

The film is also executive produced by Mike Flanagan, along with Trevor Macy and Melinda Nishioka of Intrepid Pictures, Adam F. Goldberg, Paul Holbrook, Sean E. DeMott and Tony Killough.

Neon’s rival A24 had a hit last year with “Talk to Me,” also from a number of YouTube content creators. “Talk to Me” is already getting a sequel and has led to A24 collaborating with its filmmakers on other projects as well.

The deal for “Shelby Oaks” was negotiated by Jason Wald, vice president of acquisitions and production at Neon, on behalf of the filmmakers with Aaron B. Koontz, CEO of Paper Street Pictures.

Neon just released Osgood Perkins’ horror film “Longlegs,” which grossed $22 million at the box office in its opening weekend, already making it one of Neon’s highest-grossing films in history. The indie studio also just released the trailer for director Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the film that won Neon the Palme d’Or at Cannes five years in a row.

Neon also recently acquired the rights to Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Perkins’ upcoming projects The Monkey and Keeper, and North American package rights to Julia Ducournau’s Alpha and Arthur Harari’s The Unknown.