Sean Marshall Yellow Veil Pictures announced today that they acquired the rights for director Kyra Elise Gardner’s ‘Living With Chucky’ documentary.
Living With Chucky will center on the iconic Child’s Play franchise from a personal and social perspective. Directed and conceived by Kyra Gardner, daughter to chief puppeteer for the majority of the franchise Tony Gardner. Living With Chucky utilizes new and archival interview footage to expose the series’ cultural impact over the years, with principal cast, crew members including Don Mancini, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Tony Gardner, and David Kirshner, alongside fans of the franchise like Marlon Wayans, John Waters, & Abigail Breslin.
Joe Yanick, Co-Founder of YVP, had this to say: “Living With Chucky is an essential look at the impact and longevity of the Child’s Play series, imbued with so much heart and soul. It’s a family effort that will appeal to a diverse and sprawling fan base around the world.”
I started the journey of making this film several years ago as a class assignment in film school. One semester we were asked to make documentary short films, which was a genre I despised as someone with ADHD. That was until I watched, “Stories We Tell,” which is a fascinating film that unravels a family’s secrets all from the perspective of the filmmaker. It showed me how intimate documentaries could feel and inspired me to focus my film on something personal. I originally intended making a short on what it was like growing up with a special effects makeup artist as a dad. I used to think I had a very normal childhood, but as I grew older, I realized not every other kid came home from preschool to monsters, aliens, or fake dead bodies that their father took home from work. Most notably, Chucky, the killer doll from Child’s Play, was something I would constantly come home to at the ripe age of four, and would give me nightmares for years to come. When I pitched the short in class, a teacher pointed out how often I referred to Chucky as my own brother and encouraged me to focus on that subset of my life since it is something that has been ingrained in my family for the past twenty years.
In creating the short film, it felt like I was piecing together missing bits of my childhood. I was finally meeting the other families surrounding these films that became a second family to my dad while he would be gone for several months at a time in Romania or Canada. They all referred to Chucky as an existing family member, and as they revisited their own memories, my seemingly isolated childhood from my dad felt less lonely. It was an incredible experience that resulted in feeling more involved with the “Chucky family,” as my film opened for Cult of Chucky’s premieres in London and Toronto that year. From there, it was ultimately the fans who inspired me to sit down and turn the film into a feature. They had so much passion and love for a character they considered to be their icon, yet to me is just my little brother who always gets to ride shotgun (I’m not joking, you have to buckle up Chucky anytime you travel). I knew other eighties slashers like Freddy and Jason had their own documentaries, but there wasn’t something out there that was solely dedicated to the Child’s Play franchise in its entirety. It was my chance to show fans, either new or day one die-hards, a glimpse into my reality.
Little did I know the behemoth task I had just given myself of trying to cover a beloved thirty-year-old franchise in just under two hours while fresh out of film school. Not to mention the many challenges faced along the way, such as the editing process, legalities, and a global pandemic that not only halted the filming process but also affected the entire independent film market. “Living With Chucky” has truly been a love letter not only to the franchise but to the people who work so tirelessly to continue to bring Chucky into the homes of horror fans everywhere. I hope people are able to feel just how much heart was poured into creating this film and possibly take away a newfound appreciation for their favorite franchise.
Living With Chucky screened at Popcorn Frights last weekend & will be screened next at Frightfest in the UK. The documentary will be screened at other locations throughout the fall. Check out the official poster & still below.
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