Distributor Behind Acclaimed 2024 Horror Film Sues Marketing Partner For Strangest Reason

Strange Darling has been widely considered one of the best horror films of the year, garnering solid reviews from critics, with most of them telling audiences to go in blind to achieve the best experience watching the movie. In niche horror circles, it was the talk of the genre, but on a more mainstream level, the film didn’t really expand beyond fans who hyped it up, which led to so-so business at the box office. This normally wouldn’t be too much of a problem and would mean Strange Darling was destined for cult status, but the film’s distributor sees things differently and is suing over the film’s financial underperformance

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Productions filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that is seeking $10 million from their marketing partner Spellbinder for not contributing its part of the $2 million spent on marketing the acclaimed horror release. Also, in one of the most interesting parts of the lawsuit, they alleged that Spellbinder kept some of the money to buy social media followers and views on platforms to give the illusion that they were crafting a successful marketing campaign. The situation got so bad, according to the complaint, that Spellbinder requested more money even though they were responsible for half of the marketing spend.

The lawsuit goes on to say that by June, Spellbinder did not deliver on providing a live dashboard on what they were spending on marketing, something that they were contractually obligated to do. The lawsuit accuses them of scaling back the marketing and that’s when Magenta demanded invoices to verify every dime that was being spent. Spellbinder ultimately brought in a third party called Myosin to assist with the marketing, which led to more mismanagement of the funds and revealed that Myosin and Spellbinder were linked under the same umbrella. So, to sum, there has been all manner of chaos and arguing behind the scenes.

Myosin is also named in the lawsuit, and Magenta suggests that they are actually under the same ownership as Spellbinder and “operate as a single entity and identify themselves separately only for the purposes of evading liability.” The lawsuit goes on to reveal that Sean Clayton is the founder of both companies, which adds credibility to their claims. When it comes to buying social media followers, Magenta said they discovered close to 25,000 of the film’s 27,000 followers were bots and not a sign of an engaged marketing campaign with real fans.

“Further, it appears that Spellbinder purchased views of videos posted to the Plaintiff’s YouTube Account. These videos have a high number of views but extremely limited engagement, which suggests that the views are not genuine. The few comments on these YouTube videos appear to have been generated by bots. Additionally, despite gaining millions of views on the top videos posted to the account, the account itself has generated less than 500 subscribers.”

Strange Darling debuted to very strong reviews, registering a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. But its box office was considerably muted, even by indie niche horror movie standards. The movie opened on 1,135 screens and debuted to a mere $1.1 million. Given what was spent on marketing, this was not the outcome that Magenta was expecting, making it clear that it would be a box-office underperformer. By the end of its run, the movie grossed $3.6 million on a $4 million budget.

It’s not for a lack of trying by the film’s director, JT Mollner, and one of the film’s stars, Kyle Gallner, both of whom were very vocal about the movie on X. Perhaps, if Magenta wasn’t pleased with Spellbinder’s marketing efforts, the money would’ve been spent better on Mollner and Gallner, who did everything in their power to get the word out about the film. They quickly became their own marketing machine, trying to build up the groundswell for the movie, which also stars Willa Fitzgerald. The film certainly generated buzz in smaller circles but never expanded beyond that, which could indicate that Magenta’s lawsuit has some definite weight behind it. As of this writing, Spellbinder and Myosin have not commented regarding Magenta’s lawsuit.

A twisted one-night stand spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse when a relentless predator chases an injured woman through the Oregon wilderness.

Release Date

August 23, 2024

Director

JT Mollner

Runtime

96 Minutes

Cast

Willa Fitzgerald
, Kyle Gallner
, Jason Patric
, Giovanni Ribisi
, Ed Begley Jr.
, Barbara Hershey
, Steven Michael Quezada
, Madisen Beaty
, Denise Grayson
, Eugenia Kuzmina
, Bianca A. Santos
, Sheri Foster
, Duke Mollner
, Andrew John Segal
, Robert Craighead
, Evan Peterson

Main Genre

Horror

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