EXCLUSIVE: Indie horror veteran Charles Band is teaming with a gaggle of U.S. microdrama‘s largest names to kind a vertical video label, Full Moon Artists (FMA) Productions.
Band’s Full Moon Options will home the microdrama producer, which he’ll lead alongside vertical leisure stars Eric Guilmette, Sarah Moliski, Felix Merback and Rebecca Stoughton.
FMA Productions is planning a slate of microdramas for the likes of ReelShort and different vertical video apps, and various horizontal function variations of every present aimed toward platforms comparable to Prime Video and Tubi.
The primary of 12 movies from the shingle will go into manufacturing this spring in L.A., with subsequent titles filmed in California, Cleveland and Italy.
Microdramas have been born in China, the place the business is value billions of {dollars}, earlier than a U.S. scene sprung up and is now thought-about the medium’s second-largest market. The spate of manufacturing sparked by its emergence has been buoyed by a younger technology of actors who’ve devoted themselves to the fast-moving sector. It’s now attracting main gamers and well-known faces from throughout the business, and Band is the most recent.
“As a veteran pioneer in new media, from residence video to streaming, I’m extraordinarily enthusiastic in regards to the prospects and potential within the Vertical micro-drama area,” mentioned Band.
“Working alongside this staff, all of whom are among the many largest names of their area, to kind this new enterprise has been each thrilling and eye opening. These creatives are on the slicing fringe of the Vertical world, and we’ve massive plans to develop some really unbelievable entertainments for among the most related Vertical platforms on the market, whereas additionally making progressive inroads into the unbiased function movie markets.”
Band, who based Full Moon Options in 1988, had made, distributed and directed dozens of indie horror pics and collection, lots of which have been for residence leisure. Amongst them are Re-Animator, Ghoulies and Evil Bong, however it’s the direct-to-video Puppet Grasp franchise for which he’s best-known. Band has labored in leisure for greater than 50 years and been concerned in additional than 400 movies.
He acquired into the vertical video area final 12 months with ReelShort thriller Dungeons of Ecstasy, which was shot in Rome and the Italian countryside and starred Guilmette and Merback, who was a co-producer. The discharge mannequin was the identical as what FMA Productions will try – first touchdown on the microdrama platform as a multi-episode collection after which as a typical ration movie distributed on Amazon, Tubi and the Full Moon Options streaming channel, in addition to Blu-ray.
This 12 months, he once more teamed with ReelShort for the same launch, Fashions Vs. Werewolves, which stars Moliski, Stouhgton and Dee Wallace and was shot in L.A..
Band, Guilmette, Merback, Moliski and Stoughton determined to kind FMA, matching up a veteran of the indie filmmaking biz with 4 gamers within the rising U.S. vertical video sector.
Guilmette – an actor, producer and poet – was voted the 2024 Vertical Legend and Greatest Actor In A Drama within the Vertical Drama Love Fan Awards and gained the Sapphire Imaginative and prescient Award on the Vertical Awards in September 2025. He has acted and led greater than 45 vertical collection, together with You Belong With Me on ReelShort, Chosen By Destiny on Pocket FM and Campus Rivals on Vigloo, and is a producer, actor and co-creator of ReelShort vampire collection Love & Blood.
Moliski, thought-about one of many vertical video area’s bets-known villains, has starred within the likes of ReelShort’s Virgin’s Bucket Listing, My Knockout Pretend Husband and Her Double, His Hassle. She can also be acknowledged as a microdrama casting director, and serves as a guide for numerous apps, advising on casting, expertise improvement and content material technique.
Stoughton as appeared in TV exhibits comparable to anthology collection It’s Florida, Man and options comparable to Full Moon’s Unhealthy CGI Gator. She has had lead roles in additional than vertical video collection, together with Workplace Enemies, Misplaced and Discovered and Large Unhealthy Daddy You Are Busted.
Merback is an L.A.-based actor and producer who starred in Useless Janitors Membership, which we revealed final month had been acquired for worldwide distribution by Blue Fox Leisure. The darkish comedy was based mostly on Jeff Klima’s memoir, The Useless Janitors Membership: Pathetically True Tales of a Crime Scene Cleanup King. On the microdrama entrance, he has starred within the likes of Band’s Dungeons of Ecstasy, In Love with My Bestie’s Son and Sport of Alternative.