EXCLUSIVE: Following a competitive auction that played out over the Memorial Day weekend, sources tell Deadline North Road Television Studios has landed Sunken Meadow, a buzzy pilot from writer Mac Smullen. Ahead of the release of the highly anticipated film Backrooms that the company co-financed as the co-studio with A24, North Road secured the project in an aggressive preemptive deal with many top producers and studios circling. 

While an exact figure is was not confirmed, sources say the script sold in the seven figure range, an impressive number given no other talent is attached. Insiders also add that LuckyChap is potentially coming on as a producer but no deal has been reached yet.

North Road’s Amy Israel, Josh Stern, and Peter Chernin will executive produce the new elevated horror series that is rooted in a dynamic family drama. Plot details are being kept under wraps.

Smullen is best known for his 2020 produced the documentary short Children of the Moon, about second-generation members of religious cult The Unification Church. As a screenwriter, he’s been a semifinalist for the Alfred P. Sloan Science in Film Commissioning Grant, a Finalist for the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony, and took his one-hour TV project MK-ULTRA through the Sundance Institute’s Episodic Story Lab and IFP’s Film Week. In 2022, he won the AMC One-Hour Pilot Award at the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition for his script Souvenir Alaska, which was set up at Netflix and WBTV in a competitive situation.

While the feature film spec market has seen an uptick post strike with projects like the recently released Apex selling with no talent involved, pilots have usually needed other talent to draw such a bidding war, making this sale a rare case in a evolving market. It is even more impressive that Smullen was able to land such a big sale when he had only one other sale to his name in his career.

North Road Television Studios is in post-production on The Body, from showrunner Quinn Shepherd, which is set to air on Netflix this fall after being sold straight to series. North Road Television Studios has invested in multiple local-language series, including Emmy-nominated Bad Boy, the most-watched Middle Eastern series of 2025 and the most-watched Israeli show in Netflix history. It has over a dozen projects set up in development at various streaming platforms. 

Backrooms, the hotly anticipated debut from 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons, was co-financed and co-produced by North Road’s Chernin Entertainment and A24. The film will be released theatrically on May 29. 

Smullen is represented by WME, Untitled Entertainment, and Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell & Gellman.