The next move for The Sandbox creators Arthur Madrid and Sebastien Borget is a crowdsource-funded horror film dubbed Hollywood Hills.
Hollywood Hills, an upcoming cosmic horror feature debut from writer-director Benjamin Rozovas, has opened its financing campaign to the public on Republic crowdsource investment platform. The aim is to raise $2.5 million.
Republic is an the investment platform that allows audiences to take an equity position in independent films ahead of production.
The campaign is led by The Sandbox cofounders Madrid and Borget, who are also lead investors and partners on Hollywood Hills, with The Sandbox acting as a strategic marketing and community partner. The film was first announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024.
Films of course are a risky venture, but Madrid and Borget are trying to sweeten the audience funding by offering 3,000 non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as part of the reward for fan investments. That could attract fans from the blockchain days, but it could also turn off those who had a bad experience with blockchain and cryptocurrency, due to wild pricing swings.
The Sandbox’s LAND NFTs raised $390 million from players, but the tokens have an estimated $14 million in value today, according to CoinGecko. Madrid and Borget gave up their operating roles last year as Robby Yung of Animoca Brands took the top job. Madrid is chairman while Borget is ambassador. At the time last year, The Sandbox laid off half the employees.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Madrid said, “We’ve been working on this cosmic horror movie for almost two years. The main idea was to use our experience on a couple of things from The Sandbox. I think the first one is our experience with IP. We’ve been working with over 400 IPs in fashion, in art, in movies. So we wanted to build our original IP in the space.”
He added, “We learned from Sandbox how to build community. If we have to define Web 3, I think Web 3 is about like using digital collectibles, using blockchain, using innovation to build infinite numbers of communities. So the main idea of Hollywood Hills is to launch a cosmic or movie before the movie is made with a campaign on Republic.”
Republic is a fundraising tokenized equity platform where the founders ask people to contribute to the project, but not like a like a Kickstarter campaign.
They can become investors and and follow the project. Madrid said the film has a script and they are working on casting. The founders are inspired by the success of films like Backrooms and Obsession. Madrid noted that some NFTs came back in the last couple of weeks, and so he said, “It’s not a bad moment for crypto.”
The new endeavor
Rozovas describes Hollywood Hills as a portrait of an aging Hollywood facing its own reckoning. Set over a single night on a Los Angeles death tour called ‘Dead & Famous’, the film follows the tour bus through the Hills, past the sites of celebrity murders and the hidden addresses the maps leave out. As a dying star hangs over the city, the bus veers off route and into a dreadful underworld that holds the truth about Hollywood’s secret buried history.
Hollywood Hills leverages the independent horror genre, a sector that has demonstrated strong theatrical performance and high digital community engagement. Original horror films made on modest budgets are opening ahead of studio franchises, casts of unknowns are an advantage rather than a risk, and the genre draws audiences who are still buying tickets.
The filmmakers behind many of horror’s biggest recent breakouts built their worlds online with their communities, years before the cameras started rolling. Until now, early fans and supporters of horror films have not had the opportunity to hold a financial stake in the films they help popularize and make successful. Hollywood Hills is pioneering a new community-owned financing model via Republic, allowing early fans to co-invest and hold equity in the franchise from its inception.
The Republic financing campaign utilizes a Reg CF offering to facilitate this public equity participation alongside lead investors. Investors will hold a contractual right to share in the film’s revenue. Each investor recoups 120% of their investment before further profits are split, after which remaining proceeds are divided evenly between investors and producers.
As part of this financing model, Hollywood Hills also introduces a 3,000-piece digital collection of “Hollywood Hills Villas” illustrated by Steve Scott, available only to the first 1,000 investors in the Republic campaign. There will also be a campaign video featuring hidden narrative clues that direct fans to continue their investigation across the Villas and the Black Fire Archive Discord server.
In addition, Hollywood Hills is partnering with Grave Line Tours, the leading Los Angeles operator that “puts death on the map” by running tours of the city’s most haunted addresses, to launch the ‘Dead & Famous’ bus tour in real life this October.
Attendees will ride the same route the film’s characters ride, past the same houses, to the same deaths: Ramon Novarro, Peg Entwistle, Dorothy Stratten. They will be inside the story before the film reaches a screen, and what happens on that bus will become part of the film’s lore. The first rides are reserved for investors, with plans to open the tour to the public to coincide with the film’s release.
The mythology, villas, clues, and tour all exist before the film does. The Republic campaign incorporates gamified elements designed to engage audiences during the pre-production phase, allowing early supporters to build that world alongside the filmmakers, while taking a position in the project.
“Hollywood spent a hundred years telling audiences to sit down and watch. Then Backrooms and Obsession proved the internet doesn’t watch anymore. It investigates. Hollywood Hills was built for that audience: 3,000 Villas hiding clues, a bus running the city’s real death routes, and something under Los Angeles that has been waiting longer than the studios have existed. The fans who follow the trail aren’t just solving the mystery. They’re financing the film,” said Madrid.
Hollywood Hills Production Team and Advisory Board
Hollywood Hills is structured as an international co-production. Rozovas is the writer-director. He spent two decades as a film journalist for GQ and Première, living between Paris and Los Angeles, before building games on genre IP including The Walking Dead and directing the short ‘Sam & Julia’. Hollywood Hills is his feature debut.
Harrison Allen will produce the film; his credits include ‘The Singers’ winner of the Academy Award for Live Action Short, and the Shudder Original horror feature The Last Thing Mary Saw, which premiered at Fantasia in 2021. He served as Head of Development at Intrinsic Value Films, where he oversaw 5lbs of Pressure for Lionsgate and Queen of the Ring for Sumerian.
Los Angeles producer Oscar Gervet, an alumnus of Anonymous Content, XYZ Films and Entertainment 360, will produce alongside Allen.
Benjamin Domenech and Santiago Gallelli of Madrid-based Rei Pictures are Spain producing partners, with credits including Zama, Kill the Jockey, and Landmarks, all Venice premieres, and The Settlers at Cannes. Both are Academy members.
The advisory board includes Sam Pressman, CEO of Pressman Film, whose catalogue includes American Psycho and The Crow; Thomas Vu, executive producer of Arcane and former Head of Creative at Riot Games; and filmmaker Nicolas Saada, director of Sleepless Night and Taj Mahal.
Madrid and Borget are lead investors. They cofounded Pixowl in 2011, a mobile studio built on licensed entertainment IP including Goosebumps: Horror Town, The Addams Family Mystery Mansion, Snoopy’s Town Tale and Garfield. Pixowl was acquired by Animoca Brands in 2018. As the co-founders of The Sandbox, they built more than 200 entertainment partnerships, including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, AMC’s The Walking Dead, Atari, Gucci, and Adidas. The Sandbox was named one of the TIME100 Most Influential Companies of 2022.
“With Hollywood Hills, we’ve taken our experience building immersive games and applied it to how we bring audiences into a story, letting them participate before the film even begins. The Villas are not simply collectibles. They’re pieces of evidence, carrying clues that invite people to investigate, form theories and become part of the mythology. The journey itself becomes part of the experience, driven by discovery, participation and shared culture,” said Borget.
Principal photography is scheduled for Q3 2027 in Spain. Release is targeted for 2028. Full campaign terms, risk disclosures and offering documents are available at republic.com/hollywoodhills. This release is not an offer to sell securities. Any offer is made solely through Republic and the associated offering materials.
Republic Financing Campaign Details
- Platform: Republic, republic.com/hollywoodhills
- Campaign goal: $1,000,000 (Reg CF offering; $75,000 target, $5,000,000 maximum)
- Minimum investment: $200
- Campaign window: October 1 – December 31, 2026
The first 1,000 investors get a Villa from a 3,000-piece collection, each carrying a clue to the film’s mythology.
“We really believe that everything is changing in the movies industry, and it’s pretty interesting to build an IP and build a community even before the movie is made,” said Madrid. “This is the tokenization of a real world asset. We cannot say if the NFT is dead and the perception that people bought something highly speculative. But the overall desire is to use a blockchain to build community and create a story and perks with digital collectibles.”
Madrid said the mood of the movie was inspired by Jordan Peele movies, which have a ligher mood. It’s a bit noir and darker as a suspense thriller. He said the film is a passion project, the same kind that led them to found Pixowl and make The Sandbox.
“We saw the opportunity again with the the indie film market reopening, with new ways to get distribution to fund films. So we jumped in early,” Madrid said.
Regarding The Sandbox, Borget said in an interview with GamesBeat, “Arthur and I kept a role. He is chairman. I’m ambassador, he said. I think the media exaggerated the way we were leaving. But we’re doing it on good terms.”
The hope is to use AI-native tools for films that can be used to speed production and lower costs for the movie, he said.