In 2020, Scott Glassgold sold “My Wife and I Bought a Ranch,” a short story Matt and Harrison Query first posted on Reddit’s r/nosleep. The project sold for more than $1 million and six years later, it’s finally becoming a movie.
Now titled “Seasons,” the Amazon MGM Studios horror film is written and directed by Drew Hancock (“Companion”). It stars Lily James, Jack Reynor and Ron Perlman. The project initially started at Netflix before moving over to Amazon, and is currently in production in Ireland.
Glassgold, a producer and literary manager who has spent more than a decade selling short stories from Reddit and other corners of the internet to Hollywood, is producing with Dan Cohen, alongside Shawn Levy and Dan Levine of 21 Laps and James Wan and Michael Clear of Blumhouse Atomic Monster.
A Reddit story is a story that begins in the Reddit Subreddit /No Sleep, according to Glassgold and “it’s a place where stories and authors are discovered.” Glassgold described “Seasons” as the first adaptation of one of his Reddit stories.
“It’s the proof of concept of the proof of concept, if you will,” Glassgold told Office With a View of the film, which he’s making with “the same ‘Backrooms’ team.”
Glassgold founded 12:01 Films and also runs Ground Control, a management company for screenwriters, authors and filmmakers. He has sold more than 40 short stories in recent years. His producing credits include “Prospect” with Pedro Pascal, “Hurricane Season” with Forest Whitaker and Sony Pictures’ “Tarot.” He also has “Crush” at 20th Century Studios, with Julius Avery directing.
“Seasons” comes as creator driven hits like “Backrooms” and “Obsession” have completely taken over the conversation and has studios looking harder at internet talent.
Glassgold spoke with The Wrap about how studios treated internet directors when he started first out and where he’s looking for the next “Backrooms.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve been finding talent on the internet for more than a decade. What was it like trying to get Hollywood on board with an unproven, internet-bred director back then? And has that resistance actually gone away?
Look, the resistance is night and day. Early on, there was a lot of trepidation to take risks on this unproven talent. Full disclosure, we would get into these crazy bidding wars on short films, which served as proofs of concept. We’d sell them, land at a studio, and the first call I would get would be, “This is great. We’re so excited. When can we fire the director?” They were just buying the IP. Cut to September 2026, where the director who has come up on the internet, who has a fresh voice and a fresh vision, is where the premium is. So it’s really been a huge journey to where we are today.
You’ve built a business around short stories and internet IP. Does the “Backrooms” and “Obsession” moment change what you’re looking for, or does it validate what you were already doing?
What I think both those projects do is put an emphasis on emerging talent and original ideas. So all day long, that lines up squarely with what we’re doing already. We’re using the internet as fresh, fertile ground to find concepts, to find voices, perhaps a little less traditional. And the fact that we’ve been doing that for a minute, and now that’s where the market is lining up, is just serendipitous. It’s all sort of coalescing into really what is the great inflection point.
With “Siren Head,” you’re pairing Trevor Henderson’s artwork with veteran filmmakers Brian Duffield and Zach Cregger, rather than having Henderson write or direct it himself. How do you decide when a project needs the original creator behind the camera and when it needs someone else translating their vision?
Trevor will be the first to say it. He has aspirations to one day be a filmmaker, but he doesn’t have that experience. And the scale and scope of what “Siren Head” has, it’s a large piece. So this was something that he welcomed, generally. And then when you put talent as elite as Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield, I mean, it’s truly undeniable. We were very deliberate in terms of making sure that we were building something that reflected his vision. Trevor’s an EP on the project. Trevor’s a godfather to this piece. We’re all there to actualize what ultimately was his original vision. So it really is going to be case by case. And I actually think at some point there will be a Trevor Henderson piece of IP that he’s writing and directing, but that’ll be an evolution.
Some people in the industry think this is a passing frenzy, and that most long-shot bets on internet talent still won’t pan out. Do you agree? What separates the ones that will work from the ones that won’t?
Look, I think you can already dispel that. Dan Trachtenberg came from the internet. Fede Álvarez came from the internet. Wes Ball came from the internet. These are all filmmakers that went from making films online to being some of the best filmmakers today. So we already know that transition is possible. That to me isn’t a question. Anyone that’s still debating that has missed the boat.
Having said that, it just comes down to talent, unique talent. It comes down to individuals. Inevitably, there will be bets taken on folks that don’t pan out for one reason or another. But one person coming off the internet and making a film that doesn’t quite work is not reflective of the internet as a farm system, if you will. If anything, the combination of digital filmmaking with the internet allows a filmmaker to hone their craft and learn their audience. Curry (Barker) is a great example of that. When they are stepping up to the plate, they haven’t been operating in the vacuum of, let’s call it, a film school. They’ve been bootstrapping, making material, making films and engaging with an audience.
We have that with Reddit short stories as well, where you’re getting that interaction with the reader in real time, and some of that is extraordinarily informative. You get comments where the reader is saying, “Oh, we think this story is heading here. We’re sure of it.” All right, let’s surprise them and go this way. That kind of exchange didn’t exist before. Prior to that, you needed to go make a feature film or get a show on the air to really get that audience interaction. So I actually think what we’re yielding now are even more mature filmmakers.
You launched 12:01 Films around creator-driven IP, starting with short stories. Is there a “Backrooms” or “Obsession” you passed on, or wish you’d found first?
I think it’s the “wish you found first.” A lot of us were aware of “Backrooms,” but it took some very smart people, guys I’m making movies with right now, Michael Clear and Dan Cohen, to recognize it first. They bet on the right talent and they bet on the right IP. We all spend a good portion of our day looking for that next big thing. Even within the last week, I was like, “I found this thing not under a rock. I found it under two rocks. I’m first.” Got in touch with the developer, and they’re like, “No, no, it’s spoken for.” I’m like, “How?”
What I will say is we’re now at a point where more and more people are focused on the same exact place to be mining for gold, if you will. That in itself will require, for someone like myself, a new innovation. If everyone’s looking left, I need to be looking right to find the source of that new material. To me, that’s the challenge more than missing the boat on something. We all read the trades and celebrate others’ success. That’s one side of our brain. The other side is like, “Oh, how did I miss that? I wish I was in on that.” That’s just the nature of the beast. Can’t have them all.
Where does this pipeline go from here? Are studios going to build permanent infrastructure around discovering internet talent, or does this go back to business as usual once the next big franchise movie hits?
I think it’s all of the above. Right now there’s a real openness and an emphasis on this. Generally speaking, what we have seen in the studio system is not an extraordinary amount of change. But I also think we now come from a place, as producers, as creators, where there’s a lot more empowerment on this side. So whether or not the studio changes, I feel like producers and creators are less beholden to that system to create. “Obsession” was made outside of the system. We’re going to see a handful of other movies that are made independently and then brought to the studio apparatus when the timing is right. Tom Rothman did a really smart op-ed in the New York Times a few months ago about where everything dovetails, where independent filmmaking and studio filmmaking can be one and the same.
I hate to generalize in this town, whether you’re a writer, director, agent, producer, studio. I really think everything here is about the person you’re working with, the executive, the agent, whoever that is. Certain people will remain savvy and see those opportunities, and others won’t. But the larger point I really want to make is, if the studios don’t change, I think that matters less and less, because all of us have opportunities now to go make a $5 million movie, make it dope and take it to a festival. If we do our job right, and bet on the right filmmaker, bet on the right concept, bet on the right script, they’ll meet us there. We’ll be good.
If you had to bet on it, is there another “Backrooms” or “Obsession” already sitting on the internet right now that Hollywood hasn’t found yet?
I would say to a degree. I don’t know that it’s just sitting there, but I think it could arrive tomorrow. There’s been such a collective deep dive by this town trying to find that next thing. “Backrooms” had millions of views, so that metric is easy to hone in on. I don’t think there’s a property sitting out there right now that has 100 million views that people aren’t aware of. So the way to anticipate that is the feel for what is next, and everyone’s going to be jockeying and elbowing their way to try to be there. But it’ll only be diminishing returns if we’re chasing the similar but different. I think the next thing will be wholly different. I don’t know that we need another liminal backstory, because we have “Backrooms,” and they cover that space. It’s going to be something different. But I think it’s there. It’s coming tomorrow.
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