Neon has secured U.S. distribution rights to King Snake, the new Southern gothic horror film from director Jeff Nichols, with filming already underway in Arkansas. The film stars Margaret Qualley, Michael Shannon, and Drew Starkey, with FilmNation Entertainment fully financing the project and handling worldwide sales.
The story follows a young couple — played by Qualley and Starkey — who inherit a farm in rural Arkansas and find themselves battling physical and metaphysical demons while confronting the property’s dark legacy. The acquisition was announced ahead of the Cannes Film Market, where FilmNation will shop international rights to the project.
The pairing of Nichols and Shannon carries particular weight. Shannon, Oscar-nominated for Revolutionary Road, has collaborated with Nichols on Take Shelter and Midnight Special — two films that established Nichols as one of American independent cinema’s most precise handlers of dread and working-class anxiety.
Shannon brings the same credibility to King Snake that he lent those earlier films, where everyday pressure and supernatural threat blur into each other. Qualley arrives fresh off The Substance, her high-profile turn in Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror film, and Starkey follows his acclaimed performance in Queer.
Nichols’ most recent film, The Bikeriders, starring Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Jodie Comer, was released to critical praise in 2024. King Snake marks a sharper genre pivot for the director, whose work has always carried horror’s undertow but never committed fully to its conventions.
Nichols has long championed Bill Paxton’s Frailty as a criminally underrated work that sits squarely within the Southern gothic horror tradition — a film that plays with faith and the nature of reality in ways that clearly resonate with his own sensibility.
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Neon — the studio behind Parasite and Anora — will release King Snake theatrically nationwide. The film is produced by Nichols and his Tri-State Pictures partners Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Sarah Green, in association with Range Media Partners. FilmNation’s Stacey Snider and Glen Basner serve as executive producers. Neon heads to Cannes this year with one of its most expansive competition slates, including films from James Gray, Cristian Mungiu, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and Hirokazu Koreeda.
