Independent studio Fuck Hollywood Productions has has launched a new Kickstarter campaign for its debut feature film, A Nightmare on Malcolm X Blvd, after an investor unexpectedly pulled out just weeks before production was set to begin.
The film is a horror comedy set during the 1980s comedy boom. It follows a struggling Black comedian who marries his white girlfriend and moves into her late grandmother’s Bed-Stuy brownstone, only to discover the home is haunted by the spirits of enslaved people once owned by her family. As the couple’s relationship stirs the house’s restless past, nightly nightmares escalate into full paranormal chaos.
The project is written, directed by, and starring Daddy, a New York-based filmmaker, musician, and stand-up comic who founded Fuck Hollywood Productions. Egyptian-born and raised in Ireland and Atlanta, Daddy is an NYU Film & TV graduate whose comedic work has drawn attention from BET, The FADER, Ebony, PAPER Magazine, and Complex. The studio’s 16mm Blaxploitation superhero short, Supernigga, drew more than 418,000 YouTube views within a month of its release, a showing the team says proved there’s an audience for grassroots Black filmmaking outside the traditional studio system.
Joining Daddy in the cast are Ilana Glazer (Broad City, Babes), Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play, Zola, Emily in Paris), Marie Faustin (Search Party, Babes), Deante’ Kyle of the Grits & Eggs podcast, comedian and writer Niles Abston, and William Banks. The role of “Bunny Hopper,” the film’s white female lead, has not yet been cast. The filmmakers say an announcement is expected within the week. Cinematographer Eddie Yasin, whose past work includes projects for Apple Music and artists such as Tyler, The Creator and Lady Gaga, is shooting the film.
The production is a joint effort between Fuck Hollywood Productions and two Brooklyn-based studios, Fish Fry Media, led by Abston, and Rugby-Otis Productions, founded by Jacob Boatsman and Sadie Prenda. The team has also secured partnerships with ARRI Rental, Kodak, and Kickstarter.
The film’s producers say they raised more than $61,000 in an earlier Kickstarter campaign that funded pre-production, and had locked in locations with plans to begin principal photography on September 11, 2026. Those plans were upended when an investor unexpectedly withdrew, leaving the production short $25,000. The team is now asking backers to help close that gap so it can move into production on schedule, covering costs including 16mm film, cast and crew pay, practical effects, production design, and location and equipment rentals. The film’s total budget is set at $200,000.
In a director’s statement accompanying the campaign, Daddy frames the film as part of a broader wave of Black horror following titles like Get Out and Sinners, while pushing toward rawer, more unflinching territory in the vein of Ari Aster and Wes Craven. He said the story also engages with a Black artist’s responsibility to their community and the limits of white allyship, using an interracial relationship as its central lens. The filmmakers note the project’s timing coincides with New York state’s upcoming 200th anniversary of the end of legalized slavery in 2027, as well as the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival in the region, history the team ties directly to present-day Brooklyn.
The Kickstarter campaign is live now (CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT), with the production team framing the push as an effort to build a sustainable, independent model for Black cinema outside traditional studio gatekeeping.