Yahoo Lifestyle Aperture Entertainment Signs Kyle McConaghy & Joe DeBoer, Filmmakers Behind Toronto-Bound Horror Thriller ‘Dead Mail’
EXCLUSIVE: Adam Goldworm’s Aperture Entertainment has signed Kyle McConaghy and Joe DeBoer, a Missouri filmmaking duo whose acclaimed horror thriller Dead Mail will soon have its Canadian premiere in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto Film Festival.
A mainstay on the genre festival circuit since its premiere this year at SXSW, Dead Mail has won a number of awards, including Best Film and Best Director at UK Fright Fest, and is currently rated 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Still in search of distribution, the film watches as an ominous help note finds its way to a 1980s post office, connecting a dead letter investigator to a kidnapped keyboard technician.
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We’re told the viewing experience is as if you found a vintage Fincher VHS, lost to time, in the back of your ’80s video store. Veteran genre producers Roy Lee and Steven Schneider took to the film so strongly that they came aboard as executive producers through their Spooky Pictures label.
McConaghy and DeBoer’s 20202 directorial debut, BAB, won Best Feature at the Nightmares Film Festival. This year, McConaghy also released Sheeps Clothing, an acclaimed microbudget thriller, which he co-wrote, directed and lensed. Outside of his filmmaking career, DeBoer is the co-owner and creative director at Experience Fresh, a full-service creative agency based in St. Louis.
A 15-year-old boutique management and production company working with many of the most exciting new voices in the genre space, Aperture Entertainment’s roster includes New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix, Starry Eyes filmmakers Dennis Widmyer & Kevin Kolsch, Kurtis Harder & Tesh Guttikonda (Influencer), Ezra Claytan Daniels (Monkeypaw’s People Under the Stairs), Seth Fisher (The Night Agent), Justin Dyck & Keith Cooper (Anything for Jackson), Steven C. Miller (upcoming Werewolves), and Maeve Fly author CJ Leede.
The producer of My Friend Dahmer, a critically acclaimed adaptation of Derf Backderf’s autobiographical graphic novel, starring Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff and the late Anne Heche, the company also specializes in developing IP for film and TV. Currently, Aperture is working on series including Fox’s Proof, an adaptation of the the bestselling Image Comics series, created by legacy clients Cory Goodman & Jeremy Lott; Final Girl Support Group (Max) and Maeve Fly, along with feature adaptations of Upgrade Soul (Protozoa), Horrorstor and How to Sell a Haunted House (Legendary).
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