Kamikaze Dogfight has picked up the U.S. rights to Justin McConnell’s Clapboard Jungle, a documentary about five years in the life of an indie filmmaker, ahead of respective premieres at the Fantasia Film Festival, Frightfest and Night Visions festivals.
The Canadian indie features interviews with Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Schrader, Barbara Crampton, Richard Stanley, the late George A. Romero, among others.
“Clapboard Jungle is exactly the kind of doc that aligns with our vision at Kamikaze Dogfight. Passionately made and following Justin McConnell’s journey of getting an indie genre film off the ground, it gives a sneak peek into the grueling, high-risk and challenging world of the true heroes we strive to support,” Andrew van den Houten, who co-heads along with Hans Soto the Los Angeles-based indie distributor, which is a division of Gravitas Ventures, says in a statement.
In May 2020, Kamikaze Dogfight signed a multi-picture output deal with Gravitas Ventures on the heels of van den Houten and Soto’s recently produced revenge thriller, Don’t Look Back, which had genre veteran Jeffrey Reddick making his feature film directorial debut.
Director McConnell added in his own statement about the deal for Clapboard Jungle: “It’s always the goal of a filmmaker to find partners they can trust in bringing their work to audiences, and Kamikaze Dogfight will absolutely fit that bill. I’m happy to be working with them.”
The U.S. distribution deal was negotiated between van den Houten, Soto, Unstable Ground’s Justin McConnell and Indiecan’s Avi Federgreen.
Earlier, Federgreen’s Indiecan Entertainment acquired Clapboard Jungle for the Canadian market.
International rights to the film remain available and are repped by McConnell and Federgreen.
