James Kondelik — Pitfall, Evil Dead Summer Camp & The Bigfoot Pitch Trailer

Writer-director-editor James Kondelik sits down with James and BJ for a conversation spanning their shared history at The Asylum, the 14-year road to getting Pitfall into AMC theaters, and the pitches that keep him up at night — including a summer-camp Evil Dead reboot, a Cronenberg-style snake-hybrid body horror called The Slithering, and a Bigfoot movie built on Jack Links beef jerky commercials.

Key Topics

• Asylum origins: How James and his twin brother John reverse-engineered Airplane vs. Volcano from a title alone — same year Sharknado hit the schedule
• Pitfall's long road: 14 years of pitching, a fake pitch trailer cut from Wrong Turn footage, and a producer who called mid-May asking if he could shoot in August
• The spam folder deal: How checking his junk mail led to signing with a management company after they saw the Pitfall trailer
• Marketing muscle: 7–8 million trailer views across platforms, a publicist found at the grocery store, and James spotting the trailer at an actual AMC screening
• Help Me: His follow-up horror-comedy starring Virginia Gardner (Fall, Halloween 2018) and Adrian Grenier, produced with VMI
• Condemned: A $15M+ demon-action horror script James Bressack wrote that Kondelik has his eye on — probably needs to be shot in Bulgaria
• Evil Dead pitch: A summer-camp setting, a nerdy kid named Sam, Stranger Things vibes, boat propellers as weapons, and Bruce Campbell ideally involved in some capacity
• The Slithering: A Cronenberg-esque body horror about a man slowly turning into a snake — pitched relentlessly, reviewed with mixed results
• Found footage love: Raven Encounters, Hell House LLC, House of October Built, Sinister, and why Hardcore Henry made everyone dizzy
• Industry survival: Staying visible at The Asylum, the depression dip right before a dream release, and why the congratulations always come at the wrong moment
• Advice for filmmakers: Stay busy, stay in the mix, don't be too proud to take the job, and understand that endurance is the actual skill