Filmmaker James Felix McKenney, whose credits include AUTOMATONS, the upcoming SATAN HATES YOU and the recently wrapped HYPOTHERMIA, got in touch to let us know that he’s venturing into distribution with the new Channel Midnight Releasing. The company will offer independent genre fare on DVD, video-on-demand and digital download.

“As you know, distributors just aren’t paying what they used to for films,” McKenney tells Fango. “And even back when they did pay filmmakers some decent cash up front, it was a miracle if you’d ever see any royalties from them, let alone what you actually had coming to you. I’ve also never been happy with the original release of my first movie, CANNIBALLISTIC! I didn’t like the way it sounded or looked, and the DVD itself was pretty terrible. I didn’t want to spend the time finding a distributor and the money it would cost to deliver the film, when I could be spending just a little bit more of both putting the thing out myself and know that I wasn’t getting ripped off. So my producing partners, Lisa Wisely and Chase Tyler of Work Room Productions, and I decided to form Channel Midnight in order to get CANNIBALLISTIC! out there.”

The remastered CANNIBALLISTIC!, in which a former flesheater who has been living as a reformed vegetarian winds up returning to his old dietary habits, will be available on disc, VOD and download in the fall. First, though, Channel Midnight will release BURNING INSIDE, the second feature by HUNTING SEASON’s Nathan Wrann (pictured above; see the trailer below). “I met Nathan at a FANGORIA Weekend of Horrors a couple of years ago, and he showed me the trailer for BURNING INSIDE,” McKenney recalls. “I got really excited about it; it looked like my kind of thing. Months later, he send me the finished film, and it more than lived up to expectations. Nathan and I began communicating more and more, and it became obvious that he too was feeling pretty frustrated with the current distribution model, so it seemed natural that we team up to get his movie out there.”

BURNING INSIDE, produced by Wrann’s Dalton Gang Productions and Elmar Berger’s Manic Entertainment and starring Michael Wrann and Kristina Powis, is about an amnesiac man who is driven to get bloody revenge for events he can’t remember. It’ll come out in May; the DVD will be available at various retailers and can be pre-ordered now for $19.95 at Channel Midnight’s official website. After CANNIBALLISTIC!, more releases will follow “every six months or possibly quicker,” McKenney says; titles will span genres from horror to urban dramas to psychedelia to offbeat documentaries, with the common denominator being a non-mainstream sensibility. You can see the company’s Facebook page here. “I also have a number of new films in the works,” McKenney adds, “including WORLD’S FAIR, a movie I was developing some time ago that was put on hold when the chance to make HYPOTHERMIA came along.” Look for more on HYPOTHERMIA, a creature feature for Dark Sky Films and Glass Eye Pix, at this site soon.

 

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