Bloody Disgusting

• 1. Introduction

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  Bloody Disgusting began in 2001 as a horror news website, founded by Brad Miska and Tom Owen. Miska operated under the pseudonym "Mr. Disgusting," a name that signaled the site's tone from the start. Within six years, that website was pulling in a million and a half unique visitors and twenty million page views every single month. How does a genre news site built on the darkest corners of cinema grow into a film production company, a podcast network, and eventually a streaming service with over seven hundred titles? That is the story this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. A Minority Stake and Early Growth

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  By September 2007, Bloody Disgusting had caught the attention of The Collective, a management company based in Beverly Hills. The Collective purchased a minority stake in the site that month, marking the first time outside investors put money into what had started as a fan-driven horror hub. Tom Owen and Brad Miska retained control, but the relationship with The Collective would prove lasting and consequential. The partnership opened doors to larger entertainment infrastructure that a niche horror news outlet could not have accessed on its own. That access would become critical when the company decided to move beyond covering films and start making them.

• 3. Making Movies

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  In 2011, Bloody Disgusting formally entered film production and distribution, and the first major product of that shift premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. That film was V/H/S, a found-footage anthology that launched one of the most sustained franchises in modern horror. The series continued through V/H/S/2, which premiered at Sundance in 2013, then V/H/S: Viral at Fantastic Fest in 2014, then V/H/S/94 at Fantastic Fest in 2021, and onward through entries premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest in successive years. Beyond V/H/S, the company produced films with notable festival records. A Horrible Way to Die premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and later played Fantastic Fest, where it earned three major awards: Best Screenplay for Simon Barrett, Best Actor for AJ Bowen, and Best Actress for Amy Seimetz. Southbound premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, and Kids vs. Aliens debuted at Fantastic Fest in 2022.

• 4. Bloody Disgusting Selects

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  Also in 2011, Bloody Disgusting and The Collective joined with AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. to form a distribution subsidiary called Bloody Disgusting Selects. The company's purpose was specific: to give independent filmmakers a broader theatrical release than they could typically secure on their own. Bloody Disgusting Selects purchased distribution rights to films that had premiered at festivals, then placed them into AMC Theatres for exclusive theatrical runs. After the theatrical window, those films moved through channels including Vivendi Universal's partnership with The Collective, as well as DVD, Blu-ray, and video-on-demand platforms. The catalog that passed through Selects included titles such as Cold Fish, The Woman, Terrifier 2, and Terrifier 3, among many others across multiple production origins and subgenres.

• 5. The Cinedigm Acquisition

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  In October 2021, Cineverse, then operating under the name Cinedigm, purchased Bloody Disgusting outright. The sellers were a group that included co-founders Brad Miska and Tom Owen, business partners Peter Lutrell and Heather Lutrell, and part-owner Michael Green, whose company The Collective had held a large stake. Cinedigm's stated intention was to expand Bloody Disgusting on a large scale. That same month, Cinedigm handed management of its subsidiary streaming service, Screambox, to the Bloody Disgusting team. The collaboration was framed as a reinvention of Screambox, with plans to broaden its library and develop original releases. In November 2022, the relaunched Screambox was announced under the banner "Bloody Disgusting approved," carrying a new design, revised pricing, expanded variety, and accessibility changes. At launch, the service offered over seven hundred titles, and Bloody Disgusting's own earlier streaming channel, Bloody Disgusting TV, was folded into Screambox's navigation.

• 6. Leadership and Future

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  In 2025, Brad Miska departed the company he co-founded more than two decades earlier. Operational control passed to Tom Owen, who now runs Bloody Disgusting alongside Managing Directors John Squires and Meagan Navarro. The V/H/S franchise, which started with a Sundance premiere in 2012, continued releasing new entries as recently as V/H/S/Halloween, which premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2025. That record of sustained production across more than a decade represents the distance traveled from a horror news site posting twenty million pages of coverage a month to a company whose own films now appear on the festival circuit.