Horror

Looks like someone may be barking his way to box-office glory.

IFC just expanded the October 3 theatrical run of Ben Leonberg’s SXSW hit “Good Boy” from limited to a full wide release. Told entirely from the dog’s point of view, the 72-minute horror film stars Leonberg’s Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Indy. The exact number of screens is yet to be determined, but IFC is bullish on its mass appeal. It’s a title that can also follow in the footsteps of several other recent successes from the company.

Rebranded as Independent Film Company (IFC) earlier this year, IFC now seems to have a bona fide hit on its hands. Since the trailer’s debut August 18, it has racked up 1 million views (with another 1.5 million views for the trailer as posted on IGN’s account).

(Also: Since the trailer dropped, searches for “Does the dog in Good Boy die?” spiked by more than 2,000 percent.)

“We’re a bespoke company and we really pay attention to what people want to see,” Scott Shooman, head of IFC Entertainment Group (which oversees IFC, Shudder, and RLJE Films), told IndieWire. “Last year was our second-best theatrical year ever and we want to continue that. We see an opportunity as the studios are moving to three- and four-quadrant business for the indies to try and find interesting, noisy product and try to make it as big as possible.”

“Good Boy” has a playbook to follow: IFC’s “Late Night with the Devil” and “In a Violent Nature” both reached around 1,400 screens in 2024, grossing $10 million and $4.2 million, respectively. They’re also the number #4 and #16 on the list of highest-grossing films in IFC’s history.

The top spot on that list is occupied by 2002’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with an untouchable $241 million box office. However, Shooman indicated he doesn’t consider it to be a true IFC movie since it only handled distribution in a service deal. That would make the second title on that list, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” with its $25 million gross as IFC’s biggest hit.

After former president Arianna Bocco left the company in March 2023, Shooman was installed shortly thereafter. Since then, the company sunset its genre imprint IFC Midnight in favor of the company’s streamer, Shudder, which now represents all of the company’s horror content. “Good Boy” will bear both the IFC and Shudder logos, but its streaming date is TBD.

“We have different windows for different types of films, and we’re working on that for ‘Good Boy’ as we speak,” Shooman said. “We never want to pre-announce a date prematurely. What we can say is we hope everyone sees it in theaters on October 3rd, and that’s really where we’re pointing people right now.”

“Good Boy” may follow in the footsteps of the R-rated “Late Night with the Devil” and the unrated “In a Violent Nature,” but it also is something that those gory movies were not. “It’s a PG-13 film,” Shooman said. “I don’t think there’s any age limit on loving dogs.”

Shooman is confident that audiences will continue to awww when they learn more about how Leonberg made the film. “It’s exactly the story of how you’d want an independent movie to have come together,” he said. “Ben made it with his own dog. This is his dog! This is not a stage dog, and it’s just like this is the magic and why we all got into this business.”

Additional reporting by Brian Welk.

“Good Boy” releases in theaters from IFC on Friday, October 3.