Patrick Ewald

Epic Pictures, kicked off back in 2007 by Patrick Ewald—yeah, the guy still running the show—has turned from scrappy indie upstart into a real force if you’re into genre films. Their whole thing? Make wild stuff *for* the diehards, *by* the diehards. Every year, they crank out somewhere between twenty and thirty movies, mostly sticking to the wild, weird, and spooky. They don’t just make ‘em, either—they throw down the cash and handle getting the movies out there, which is honestly pretty rare these days. Fast forward to 2013 and they set up Epic Pictures Releasing, basically their own US distribution arm. So now, they’re not just hustling films overseas, they’re making sure American fans don’t miss out on the madness. But Ewald and crew didn’t stop there. In 2017, they scooped up Dread Central—yeah, *the* horror website everyone and their zombie grandma knows about. That wasn’t just a flex; it was the start of their Dread horror label (which, by the way, has its own AVOD channel and a podcast network because, of course it does). Then in 2019, Epic Pictures dove into gaming with DreadXP. They started as a site for horror game coverage, reviews, and streaming—basically a home for horror nerds who’d rather button-mash than watch. Next thing you know, 2020 rolls around and they’re publishing games too, dropping The Dread X Collection, an anthology that ropes in some of the wildest indie developers. It’s like, whatever’s next in horror? Epic Pictures probably already has their hands in it.