Congratulations on It Ends hitting theaters; it’s been quite a ride from the world premiere at SXSW over two years ago, through the film’s digital showcase on Video Store and now a US theatrical release from Neon. What can you tell me about the path from screening It Ends at festivals to now?
Alexander Ullom: When we were screening It Ends in Chicago and all over, it was completely dead in the market. This energy we were getting from institutions was, “That was a nice, little [debut,] but what’s your next film?” And even that was non-committal. It was heartbreaking at first, to have such love and support from the film-festival circuit and not as much from larger distributors. But the community championing the movie—writers like you, lots of online horror influencers—gave our team the belief that more people would eventually find it. I was at a place where I was ready to upload the movie on YouTube. I wanted to just get it out. It was already an essentially iterative project we’d made on the side; YouTube could have been a great home for it. But it was tough.
What specifically led us to and to Neon was, again, community support. I had a meeting on the Universal lot, where they just were like, “Hey, nice movie, kid.” On the way out, they were having a Jurassic World Rebirth event, and I saw all these movie influencers I love, like Nicolas Curci. I hopped a fence, got swarmed by security and said I was an influencer too; they brought me up to this group of influencers who I started talking to, and they were like, “Oh, where’s It Ends? What’s going on with It Ends? Why can’t I watch it? I heard about that back in March.” I sent it to them, and that community picked it up and really championed it. Then, Kit Lazer posted about it, and Matthew Buchanan, the CEO of , saw that; they were launching Video Store, so there was this synchronicity at play. It just made perfect sense. It was like, “This is actually better than uploading it on YouTube, because it’s putting it directly into the community.”
I’d met with Neon right after SXSW, and they were very supportive but still figuring out if it would ever work in their slate. It went quiet. Two things helped: the community championing the film, which happened even more once it came out on Video Store, and taking the next project, [4 X 4: The Event,] out, which allowed Neon to support our young, independent team by releasing our first film then going after our second. So much was working in unison.
At this point, how long have you been working on It Ends? Weren’t you 22 when you started out?