Award-winning studio NEON and Waypoint Entertainment’s Cweature Features have come on board writer and director Damian McCarthy’s (“Oddity”) film “Hokum,” starring Adam Scott (“Severance”). NEON will release the film theatrically in the US in 2026. NEON International will represent the foreign sales rights and introduce the film next week at TIFF. Cweature Features board as co-producers on the project joining Image Nation and Spooky Pictures, as well as Team Thrives, who co-financed the project. The film is currently in post production.

Peter Coonan (“Bad Sisters”) and David Wilmot (“Bodkin”) join Scott along with Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, and Michael Patric. Siox C, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio, and Ezra Carlisle round out the cast.

When reclusive novelist Ohm Bauman (Scott) retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, the staff’s tales of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite take hold of his mind. Soon, disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance draw him into a nightmarish confrontation with the darkest corners of his past.

“Hokum” follows McCarthy’s feature debut “Oddity,” which premiered at SXSW and won the Audience Award in the Midnighter Section. The film is produced by Spooky Pictures founders Roy Lee and Steven Schneider, Image Nation’s Derek Dauchy and Tailored Film’s Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde and Mairtín de Barra. Executive producers include Cweature Features’ Ken Kao and Josh Rosenbaum, as well as Ben Ross, Dan Kagan, Rami Yasin, Andrew Childs, and Team Thrives’ Bryan Meng and Dr. Terence Chan .The project is also supported by co-production funding from Screen Ireland/ Fís Éireann. The deal was negotiated by Jason Wald for NEON, Josh Rosenbaum for Cweature Features, and Ben Ross for Image Nation.

As previously announced, “Hokum” is the latest collaboration between Image Nation and Spooky Pictures following Charlie Polinger’s lauded feature “The Plague” which debuted in Cannes, last year’s hit “Late Night With the Devil” and the critically acclaimed thriller “Watcher,” directed by Chloe Okuno and starring Maika Monroe. The project is the sixth in the current Image Nation/Spooky Pictures slate following the announcement of Bryan Edward Hills’ “Archangel” starring Connor Leslie and Randall Okita’s “Menace” starring Isabel May, which was acquired by IFC/Shudder at Cannes last year.

Tailored Films, the Irish banner that co-produced Ali Abbasi’s Cannes-bowing and Oscar-nominated “The Apprentice” and Mubi’s “Bring Them Down” starring Barry Keoghan, is also on board.

Heading into TIFF next week, the NEON International sales slate currently includes: Takashi Miike’s next film “Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo” starring Shun Oguri and Lily James; Kevin Bacon’s “Family Movie” starring Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick; “Her Private Hell” from director Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton; “Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie” from comedy duo Matt Johnson and Jay McCaroll; and “Shelby Oaks” from writer/director Chris Stuckmann.

NEON recently released Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin’s sophomore feature “Splitsville” starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, which grossed the highest per screen average its premiere weekend, and the Sundance breakout film Together starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco. At the Venice Film Festival Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice,” which NEON boarded earlier this year, will make its world premiere and at TIFF, NEON is presenting several films in Official Selection including “The Secret Agent,” “It Was Just an Accident,” “Sirât,” “Sentimental Value,” “Orwell: 2+2=5,” “Arco,” “Exit 8” and “Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie.”

About NEON
In only eight years, NEON has garnered 39 Academy Award nominations (7 this year), 11 total wins (5 this year), including two Best Picture wins, and has grossed over $400M at the box office. The company continues to push boundaries and take creative risks on bold cinema such as Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which recently took home five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was released in theaters to the highest per-screen average of 2024; as well as Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which made history winning four Academy Awards, becoming the first non-English-language film to claim Best Picture, and grossed over $54M at the domestic box office.

NEON has built an impressive streak winning the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with six consecutive wins, including this most recent year’s winner “It Was Just an Accident” from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, as well as “Anora,” “Parasite,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Titane,” and “Triangle of Sadness.” In 2024, NEON was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Independent Studio of the Year and received the Clio Award for Studio of the Year.

Recent NEON releases include Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck” and Osgood Perkins’ horror film “The Monkey,” both of which are based on the short stories by Stephen King. “The Monkey” marked NEON’s second biggest opening weekend at the box office following Perkins’ “Longlegs,” which is the highest grossing independent film of the year at $75 million domestically.

As a burgeoning leader in the production space, NEON’s recent and upcoming in-house productions include: David Robert Mitchell’s “They Follow” starring Maika Monroe; Michael Covino’s “Splitsville” starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona; the highly anticipated Boots Riley feature “I Love Boosters” starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, Demi Moore, and Eiza González; “The Wrong Girls” starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat; Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” starring Hunter Schafer; and Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool.” NEON’s international sales outfit handles the company’s in-house titles as well as third party projects.

NEON has amassed a library of over 120 films, with a noteworthy selection of Academy Award nominated films including: Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig;” Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days;” “Robot Dreams” from Pablo Bergfeer; documentaries “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” “Fire of Love,” “Moonage Daydream,” and “Flee,” which made history becoming the first film to score an impressive trifecta of Oscar nominations; Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in The World;” and Craig Gillespie’s “I, Tonya.”