In a conservative religious compound in the Southeast, a young Daril Fannin was told that television was the Devil’s tool—that Satan would use the small screen to control their minds. His bedroom, his parents’ bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room all occupied the same cramped corner of a church parsonage. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to be yourself.

At 17, he and a friend snuck out to rent The Matrix from Blockbuster. It changed his life.

“I saw my own self on screen,” Fannin recalls in a recent interview with Film Threat’s Chris Gore. “It was like this existential crisis. I realized I was living in a false reality where my entire world was controlled by a narrative.”

Within months, he enlisted in the Army as a way out. Nine years later, after becoming Tennessee’s Soldier of the Year, he was encouraged to pursue higher education. So he did what seemed logical: he applied to film school to make the movies that had saved him.

“Saw my own self on screen, realized living in false reality.”

Today, Fannin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kino Studios, a company that has cracked a code many filmmakers believe is impossible—how to make commercially successful independent films in an age when studios spend hundreds of millions and barely break even. His latest film, Undertone, produced for less than $500,000, was picked up by A24 and has become one of the most talked-about horror films of the year.

It’s a remarkable trajectory. But more importantly, it’s a roadmap for what filmmaking could be.

The Netflix Deal Before Film School Was Even Over

Fannin’s path to Kino wasn’t linear. While studying screenwriting in LA, he and friend Sean Vance—a Green Beret medic with a similarly unconventional background—created a TV show. They sold it to Netflix. While they were still in film school.

“Matt Damon FaceTimed my parents to tell them we sold the show,” Fannin laughs. “My mom had no idea who he was.”

That success led to comedy television work and a pilot with Jimmy Kimmel. He was on the traditional Hollywood path. But somewhere along the way, something nagged at him. He kept hearing the same refrain from industry insiders: independent film was dead. It was unsustainable. The only way to make money in the cinema was to start with billions.

“I just didn’t agree,” Fannin says. “I thought, maybe there’s a thesis here. Great independent cinema, when it’s done well, can be profitable. It speaks to people. It changes lives.”

In 2014, he and his brother—who had also escaped their religious upbringing—along with their partner Brit, founded Kino with a mission: use technology to streamline filmmaking and protect content from script to screen. They also established a film fund to invest in the kind of indie projects they believed in.

“Film and TV collaborative mediums needing financial incentive alignment for success.”

For years, the work was less creative and more financial. “It’s the least creative part of my job, which I really hate,” Fannin admits. “But we believe there’s a realm of micro-budget independent filmmaking where you can tell powerful, compelling stories.”

The Undertone Opportunity

When Fannin read the script for Undertone, written and directed by Ian Gelder, he felt something click. The story had been written in Gelder’s childhood home while he cared for his dying parents—deeply personal, raw, and contained. A woman named Nina, alone in a house, is listening to a true-crime podcast about a serial killer in her area. The threat is invisible, mostly. The sound design becomes the weapon.

“I felt like I was the audience for this film,” Fannin says. “And I hoped if I loved it, there would be weirdos like me who would too.”

The budget was brutally small. The original script ran over 200 pages. A24 would later purchase the first version for less than the $500,000 figure reported publicly. They invested more in post-production, tightened the first act, and made tweaks that went a long way. The final budget: still under half a million.

Casting became a test of principle. Kino had built their thesis around “de-risking”—the idea that you need a name to put butts in seats. They were pulling for someone with a recognizable face. But creatively, the role demanded Nina Carrillo. So they cast her. “It was the best decision ever,” Fannin says.

What followed was a compressed timeline that would make most producers weep: shot in February, cut locked for Fantasia by July. Using Kino’s own technology—a platform called ScreenKey that lets you watch cuts on your smart TV and leave timestamped feedback that exports directly into editing software—they collapsed what usually takes months into weeks.

The A24 Moment

Undertone screened at Fantasia, and the response was electric. Simultaneously, the film went out to distributors. Suddenly, they had a bidding war. Shutter came in with an offer that was nearly double the budget. But A24’s vision aligned with their own, and A24 had proven they knew how to market indie horror in ways that actually worked.

“Concept must be small and executably small or it fails.”

A24 understood the movie’s DNA. They released trailers at 3 AM, the “witching hour,” with audio manipulations and reversed sound bites that forced audiences to lean in. It was experiential marketing—the kind that makes you stop your scroll and say, “What the hell is happening?”

The strategy worked. Undertone became the kind of indie horror film that generates word of mouth, critical praise, and audience devotion. Stephen King praised Nina Carrillo’s performance. Eli Roth said the sound design deserved an Oscar nomination. In Dolby theaters, the spatial audio design—where disembodied voices move through the house as if they’re physically present—creates something genuinely unsettling.

Fannin, who has seen the film 30-plus times, still finds himself looking over his shoulder.

The Blueprint for the Future

What makes this story relevant beyond Undertone is the economics. Fannin has figured out something the studios seem to have forgotten: you don’t need $100 million to tell a story that resonates. You need a concept that matches your budget.

“The concept needs to be small, and it needs to be executably small,” Fannin explains. “There are people who want to make a $30 million movie for a $3 million budget, and you just can’t do that. The concept has to support it.”

It’s harder to lose money on a $500,000 film than on a $1.5 million film, even though the latter is only three times the budget. The economics are cleaner. Recoupment becomes possible. Most importantly, creativity isn’t strangled by the need to justify massive expenditures.

Kino has also built equity into their crew model. The people who showed up and did the work have a piece of the win. Every department head, every key crew member, shared in the success. When the film entered a bidding war, and A24 bought it for significantly more than the production budget, the people who made it got paid.

“I believe film and TV are the most collaborative medium in existence,” Fannin says. “We need to embrace that and financially incentivize everyone to make the best film possible and run in the same direction.”

The Indie Film Revolution Is Here

Fannin is optimistic about what’s happening in independent cinema. The traditional studio model is in flux—mergers, acquisitions, cycles of fear. But for filmmakers willing to be tenacious, the opportunity is real.

“We’re seeing this shift,” he says. “The world is always shifting, but it’s shifting more rapidly than ever. If you can get ahead of that curve, there’s an opportunity.”

What he’s built at Kino—combining technology, smart financing, crew equity, and a genuine belief in creative storytelling—suggests a different path forward. Not the old indie model of festivals and arthouse theaters. Not the blockbuster model of bloated budgets and tentpole IP. Something new.

“Felt like the audience for film, hoped other weirdos would too.”

It’s a model rooted in a 17-year-old who snuck out to watch The Matrix and realized he was living in a false reality. Now, over a decade into his filmmaking journey, he’s building tools to help other filmmakers tell their truths more efficiently.

The horror film that emerged from this philosophy—made by a team of collaborators who believed in the project, shot in weeks, edited in months, and purchased by one of the smartest distributors in the game—is proof that the model works.

In a landscape where studio executives wonder why blockbuster after blockbuster underperforms, here’s a question: What if the answer isn’t to spend more money, but less? What if the answer is to trust the filmmakers, trust the concept, and trust the audience?

Daril Fannin seems to have figured it out. And if he’s right, independent cinema isn’t dying—it’s just being reborn.