Next Wednesday, December 11th, Gunpowder & Sky’s horror brand ALTER, is exclusively debuting the award-winning short horror film, TiCK, starring Alexander De Jordy (“19-2”), Ava Close (Rabid), Alison Brooks (The Black Widow Killer) and Brooke Debassige (“Hard Rock Medical”). TiCK, written and directed by Ashlea Wessel, was the recipient of Best Horror Short at the 2019 Nightmares Film Festival and the Bloody Judge Award at the 2019 Portland Horror Film Festival.

In a post-pandemic society, a vampire in hiding is forced to make a stand when confronted by the oppressive regime who kidnapped and enslaved her family.

Ashlea Wessel is a filmmaker and blood donor hailing from the raccoon-infested hellmouth called Toronto, Canada. Wessel’s films use elements of horror, sci-fi and fantasy as a framework to explore themes of social, political and personal upheaval. She tells her stories using an arresting visual style that couples stark realism with a phantasmagoric flair. Her award-winning short film INK screened at festivals around the world and she celebrated the world premiere of her sophomore film, TiCK at Fantasia International Fantastic Film Festival in 2018.  She looks forward to TiCK‘s online premiere on ALTER and the continuing festival run of her third short, Daughter of Babel.  She is currently developing numerous projects, including the feature version of TiCK!

ALTER is a new horror brand for novel and grounded stories exploring the human condition through warped perspectives.

Giving voice to emerging, diverse and established filmmakers, ALTER’s owned and operated channel is distributed across YouTube and Facebook where three short films or series are released each week. In addition to curating and distributing award-winning content, ALTER develops unique stories with some of the most innovative minds in the genre through its ALTER Studio projects – which are not bound to a particular platform or format.

Recent releases include the official 2018 Sundance Film Festival selection, Summer of 84, the thriller directed by RKSS (Turbo Kid); CAM (in partnership with Blumhouse), winner of Best Screenplay at last year’s Fantasia Festival, which was acquired by Netflix; Goodnight, Gracie from Stellan Kendrick, one of ALTER’s first exclusive premieres and BAFTA nominated The Blue Door, which was picked up by Amblin to develop into a feature film.  In September, ALTER released the SXSW selection Villains — starring Bill Skarsgard (It) and Maika Monroe (It Follows) — in theaters.

In October, ALTER, along with DIGA studios and Executive Producer Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Spider-Man), announced new horror series “50 States of Fright”, starring Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), Travis Fimmel (“Vikings”, Warcraft: The Beginning), Christina Ricci (Monster, “Z: The Beginning of Everything”), Jacob Batalon (Spiderman: Homecoming, Spiderman: Far From Home), Ming-Na Wen (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D,” “The Mandalorian”), Taissa Farmiga (The Nun, “American Horror Story”), Asa Butterfield (“Sex Education”, Hugo), John Marshall Jones (The Last Revolutionary, “Rectify”) and Ron Livingston (“Loudermilk”, “A Million Little Things”). The anthology is the first announced series for Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new mobile video service, Quibi.