Boogeyman Pop director explains why Blumhouse anthology hasn’t been released

About four and a half years ago, a trailer was unveiled for an independent horror movie called Boogeyman Pop, which had secured a distribution deal with Blumhouse and counted Chris Weitz (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer, The Twilight Saga: New Moon director) as an executive producer. The movie had a couple festival screenings – and then disappeared, with no word on if or when Blumhouse ever intended to release it. Our friends at Bloody Disgusting recently posted an article to ponder the fate of Boogeyman Pop… and the film’s writer/director Brad Michael Elmore actually commented with information on why we still haven’t seen his movie!

Elmore said, “Boogeyman Pop and it’s status is a weird thing. It was not initially a Blumhouse movie. It was a guerilla made indie, that Blumhouse stepped in midway through making it and gave us some finishing funds. It’s a strange little movie that isn’t really all that horror centric, it’s a 150k hangout movie, like Slacker, that takes place in a world where teen horror tropes sort of exist on the peripheral of the lives of these kids.

It went to a few festivals. The reaction was mixed positive I’d say. It was set to be released by Shudder. The reasons it did not are byzantine and I can’t really talk about them. But the short of it is this, due to its guerilla nature and some other internecine factors with Blumhouse, there was a problem with the deliverables, which are the legal documents that go along with a movie. Because the movie is so cheap, the potential cost of sewing all the legal up would be more than the cost of the movie and what I imagine Shudder might have paid for it. It’s certainly more complicated than that but that’s the shortest way to put it.

It’s a huge heartbreak because so many people worked really hard on it and did a lot of really cool and interesting work. It also took years to make. I continue to hold out hope that one day I can get it out there to be seen. In my admittedly bias estimation it’s a worthy little psychedelic punk artifact of indie filmmaking.“

Reportedly filmed over the course of three years, Boogeyman Pop is set during one summer weekend as a bat-wielding, masked killer in a rusted-out black Cadillac weaves in and out of three interlocking stories awash in sex, drugs, punk rock, black magic, and broken homes.

It’s disappointing to hear that issues derailed the film’s distribution deals with Blumhouse and Shudder. Here’s hoping Elmore will be able to get Boogeyman Pop out into the world somehow, someday.

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