THE HELL-FIGHTING HOUND MAKING HEADLINES
HOW
GOOD BOY’S FILMMAKER COLLARED A CANINE STAR FOR HIS BUZZY HORROR DEBUT
Top: Retriever Indy — surely a shoo-in for the next Palm Dog.
SOMETIMES ALL YOU need to hook audiences is a great logline. Case in point: “a horror movie from the perspective of a dog”, the killer sell that has helped make Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy one of the most talked-about indie films of the year. Then came its trailer, which caused a 2,000 per cent spike in Google searches asking if the starring canine dies. “Dogs are such an easy character to click into because people instantly love them,” Leonberg explains. “You don’t have to spend time convincing your audience that this is a hero they want to root for. They’re like, ‘Well, I’ll die for him if I have to.’”