Verve Signs ‘Good Boy’ Filmmaker Ben Leonberg, Will Rep His SXSW-Bound Horror-Thriller For Sales

Matt Grobar

25 February 2025 at 12:12 pm·2-min read

EXCLUSIVE: Verve Ventures, Verve’s film financing and sales division, has boarded Good Boy to represent worldwide rights, ahead of the horror-thriller’s SXSW world premiere. Verve has also just signed Ben Leonberg, the film’s co-writer and director, who with the project, makes his feature directorial debut.

Good Boy sees Leonberg direct his family pet through the performance of a lifetime, resulting in a frightening, innovative paranormal thriller. The film was shot over a period of three years and is told from the perspective of Indy — a loyal, everyday dog thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and the only one who can see the forces that haunt us.

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The film is set to launch as part of SXSW’s Midnighter section at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX at 9:30 p.m. CT on March 8. In a statement to Deadline, Amy Beecroft, Head of Verve Ventures, called Good Boy “a revolutionary supernatural thriller that redefines the haunted house genre.”

Continued Beecroft, “Visceral and terrifying, this film switches up the lens through which we view the familiar supernatural thriller setting into an experience unlike anything audiences have seen before. Ben absolutely blew us away with his directorial debut!”

“With all the care that went into the making of Good Boy,” said Leonberg, “I wanted to be sure the same attention would be put into sharing it with the wider world. Verve immediately surrounded me with a specialized team that’s ready to champion both the film and my own practical-yet-fantastical approach to filmmaking.”

A writer, director, and cinematographer whose career has spanned narrative, commercial, and VR production, Leonberg’s mission is to apply an Eagle Scout-instilled can-do spirit to making genre films that feel handmade. His filmmaking pairs fantastical events with deeply relatable stories, and he wields every tool at his disposal to make them a reality: from practical special effects, to innovation techniques adapted from VR, to his experience as a dump truck driver.

Prior to Good Boy, Leonberg helmed numerous shorts, including Bare Thoughts, Dead Head, The Fisherman’s Wife, and Bears Discover Fire, among others.