A prize that ran once, and the film it paid for

The Prize That Paid for Everything

The Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival ran once, in 2002, and Jeff Wadlow and Beau Bauman won it with the short that became Cry Wolf.

What the Short Became

How Wadlow and Bauman expanded a competition short into a feature screenplay, and the structural choices — the liar's game, the prep school, the killer-in-the-text — that survived from draft to screen.

Rogue Pictures Under Focus Features

Rogue Pictures was the genre arm of Focus Features for roughly four years; this piece places Cry Wolf in that slate, names the other titles Rogue released, and explains why the label closed when it did.

What the Reviews Actually Said

A close reading of the critical reception Cry Wolf received at release — the Rotten Tomatoes score as it stood in September 2005, the trade reviews, and the specific formal elements critics noticed or dismissed.

Kick-Ass 2, Truth or Dare, and the Shape of a Career

Jeff Wadlow's subsequent directing credits — Kick-Ass 2 (2013), Truth or Dare (2018), Fantasy Island (2020) — read as a record of what a Chrysler-funded debut opened and what it cost to sustain it at studio scale.