EXCLUSIVE: Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer, the genre production company behind the M3GAN films, Heart Eyes and more, are set to exec produce Play House, a new micro-budget horror movie from director Nicolas Curcio and Chroma, to star Will Harrison (Daisy Jones & The Six), Jessica Sula (Split), Jordan Gonzalez (The Long Walk), and James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer).
Currently in production in Los Angeles, Play House follows Elliot, a man who buys a dilapidated house in an attempt to prove to his ex he can finally be a serious adult. While renovating the property, he uncovers VHS tapes of an unaired children’s television show hidden in the basement. What initially appears to be a disturbing DIY kids’ program soon pulls him into obsessive madness, revealing that the tapes — and the house itself — may have a far more sinister backstory.
Play House was the inaugural winner of Fantastic Pitches, a micro-budget genre initiative spearheaded by Fantastic Fest and Chroma, which awarded the team $100,000 in production financing. The project was selected by a jury that included filmmaker Matt Johnson (Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie), genre icon Barbara Crampton (Brea Grant’s upcoming Grind, Suitable Flesh), and filmmaker Toby Poser (Hellbender, Mother of Flies).
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Curcio is directing from a script written with Kirby Gladstein. Ben Gojer, Jack Forbes and Derek Tramont are producing, with Nina Millin (Grey’s Anatomy) and Kevin Keppy (Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities) rounding out the cast. Salvatore Schiavone is the project’s casting director.
Breaking out with a lead role in Prime Video’s Daisy Jones & The Six, Harrison has also recently been seen in Hulu’s Murdaugh: Death in the Family and James Mangold’s Searchlight pic A Complete Unknown with Timothée Chalamet. Most recently seen starring on Broadway in Pulitzer Prize winner James Graham’s play Punch, he is repped by Gersh and 3 Arts Entertainment.
Welsh-born actor Sula will next be seen portraying LaToya Jackson in Michael, the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua for Lionsgate. Additional credits include Amazon’s Panic, Netflix’s Godless, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, and the horror film Malum. Like Harrison, she is repped by Gersh and 3 Arts Entertainment.
Recently appearing opposite Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson in Lionsgate’s The Long Walk, Jordan Gonzalez previously was a series regular on Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin and recurred on Showtime’s The L-Word: Generation Q. He is repped by Innovative and Untitled.
Seen in recent films like Oppenheimer, The Fabelmans, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, veteran character actor Urbaniak’s upcoming slate includes Every Heavy Thing, Puddysticks and Grind. He is repped by Buchwald and Endorse Management Group.
Founded in 2013, Divide/Conquer has produced more than 30 feature films, including Universal/Blumhouse’s M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0, Universal’s Freaky, Amazon’s Totally Killer and The Voyeurs, Netflix’s Cam, and Spyglass/Sony’s Heart Eyes. As we reported, the company recently signed a first-look deal with Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, with Doomtown as its first project in development at the studio.
Millin is repped by Vanguard Management Group; Keppy by RPM Talent; Curcio by UTA.