From Sundance
to a studio of our own.

SUNDANCE & SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST

An imagination noticed in Hollywood.

Sarah Daly’s writing first reached international film audiences through Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord. Her script for Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date with Destiny became a short directed by and starring Gordon-Levitt, with Brewster helping create its distinctive illustrated world. It premiered at Sundance in 2010.

The sequel, Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo, brought Channing Tatum into the collaboration and screened at South by Southwest. Brewster recalls Robert Redford watching the first film and Gordon-Levitt later acknowledging his contribution on Carson Daly’s television programme.

Daly’s wider hitRECord work also reached celebrated performers: Gary Oldman performed Turnip Head, while Anne Hathaway performed her songs. Sia also performed Telephone, Daly’s collaboration with Mike Regan Noise, live in concert. These collaborations preceded a different ambition: to build a lasting company around original work in Scotland.

HEX STUDIOS & THE OWLMAN

A Scottish nightmare travels.

Directed by Brewster and written by Daly, Lord of Tears established Hex Studios’ Gothic voice. It won the Audience Award at the Bram Stoker International Film Festival, where Lexy Hulme also received Best Female Lead. Bloody Disgusting critic Patrick Cooper placed it fourth in his personal best-of-2013 selection; a Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival screening followed in 2014.

Its antagonist, the Owlman, escaped the confines of the film through widely shared prank videos. Brewster estimates that the Owlman video campaign accumulated 160 million views, and recalls celebrity admirers including Alice Cooper and Kelly Osbourne. The character subsequently became a licensed collectible in Mezco Toyz’s Living Dead Dolls Presents and One:12 Collective ranges: a creation from a Scottish independent film reaching collectors around the world.

KIDS VS MONSTERS

A Hollywood cast. Handmade monsters.

Daly wrote Kids vs Monsters, released in 2015, with Brewster serving as senior producer. As a freelance producer, he raised US$8 million for the picture, according to the studio’s production account. The Dark Dunes production, directed by Sultan Saeed Al Darmaki, brought together Malcolm McDowell, Lance Henriksen and Armand Assante.

Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. supplied the practical creature effects, including puppets, animatronics and performers in monster suits. The production added Hollywood feature experience to a partnership already developing its own independent films.

FRIGHTFEST, BRUSSELS & GLASGOW

A darker, wider canvas.

The Unkindness of Ravens entered the FrightFest programme in 2016 and screened at Brussels in 2017. Its soldier’s psychological ordeal was followed by the monochrome ballet melodrama The Black Gloves, which had its world premiere at FrightFest’s Halloween event in 2017.

Writing in Sight and Sound, Anton Bitel named The Black Gloves one of his two favourites of the event: “The film looks glorious.”

In 2019, The Devil’s Machine, then titled Automata, premiered at FrightFest Glasgow, part of Glasgow Film Festival. Its financing had already attracted attention: in May 2018, Bloody Disgusting reported Automata as the UK’s most-funded narrative film on Kickstarter. Across these pictures, Brewster and Daly developed a cinema of heightened performance, period design and unsettling beauty.

THE RETURN OF AMICUS

An inheritance put back to work.

In August 2023, Brewster and Daly announced the revival of Amicus Productions with the family of co-founder Milton Subotsky. In the Grip of Terror was announced as the venture’s first picture, with Sergei and Dmitri Subotsky among its executive producers.

The revival received coverage in The Guardian and the international genre press. The List included Brewster in its 2023 Hot 100 of Scottish culture; his work restoring Amicus later received a Special Recognition Rondo in 2025. It also widened the creative undertaking beyond Hex: new productions, a growing company of performers, and the foundations for the British Horror Studio project that followed.

THE BRITISH HORROR STUDIO

Building a company that continues.

The British Horror Studio project took shape in 2024. Brewster’s year-end account traces its community launch to 4 May, when the former Channel Hex Patreon began its transformation into a home for the wider studio.

Brewster’s subsequent fundraising for studio films totals approximately US$2 million in private equity and crowdfunding, according to the studio’s figures. The proposition was a vertically integrated independent company, inspired by the classic studio system: writers, actors, filmmakers and technicians working together, with production, talent development and distribution under one roof.

Hex Studios, the revived Amicus and Fife Creative Studios’ educational work formed the basis of this undertaking. Its repertory of performers and its audience community became part of a continuing institution, capable of making successive pictures and developing the people who create them.

THE B-TEAM

Room for a more radical picture.

The B-Team developed from the studio’s helpers and emerging filmmakers into a production initiative fronted by Megan Tremethick and Paul William Kelly. Its November 2025 launch event presented three features, establishing another route through which new artists could make substantial work.

Alongside Mr Whispers, its developing slate makes room for experimental and avant-garde horror. Place of Execution, directed by Tom Staunton and produced by Kelly, stars Novarro Ramon and Callum Alexander Wright. Its screenplay is by Sam Ashurst and Lawrie Brewster.

By September 2026, principal photography had wrapped. An autonomous crew bringing a new director’s first feature into being was a practical demonstration of what the studio was built to enable.

A PERFORMER BEHIND THE CAMERA

Megan Tremethick’s directing debut.

Megan Tremethick received Best Directorial Debut at the Romford Horror Festival for Spoiling You, her first feature as director. The film had its world premiere at the festival that February.

Co-written by Tremethick and Brewster, it turns the intimacy of online ASMR into psychological horror. Her move from leading performer to feature director expresses a central studio conviction: artists should have the opportunity to originate work as well as appear in it.

The same year, The Reign of Queen Ginnarra, directed by Brewster and starring Tremethick, won the Rondo Award for Best Independent Film.

BHS PICTURE HOUSE

From making films to bringing them to audiences.

BHS Picture House marks the studio’s move into theatrical distribution, giving audiences a place to find cinema screenings of its films. Alongside the direct studio shop, it extends the company’s involvement from development and production to the way a picture reaches its audience.

At home, eligible Senior Patreon members and above can stream the BHS Picture House collection while their membership is active. The wider Patreon community offers free participation and contributing tiers, with regular personal updates from the people making the films.

In September 2026, the Patreon community stood at around 3,800 members, across free and paid memberships. That direct relationship is central to the studio’s independence: audiences can attend a screening, buy an edition, or help sustain the work through membership.