Filmmaker Caleb Phillips has found a home at WME.
It’s the latest rep move for Phillips, who also recently signed with Underground, the management firm that is home to Obsession‘s Curry Barker.
Phillips is known for the viral horror short Other Side Of The Box, which has amassed more than 30 million views since launching in 2018. It centers on a couple who is gifted a mysterious box — to disastrous results.
The film became a calling card for Phillips as he honed his skills as a director while working as a crewmember on various productions. He followed it up with Play Me, centering on a woman who awakens in a car with no memory to discover a man tied up in the backseat. Next to her seat is as a voice recorder with a note reading “play me.”
Phillips is coming off of the South by Southwest debut of his feature Imposters, which he wrote and directed. The genre-bending movie stars Jessica Rothe as a mother desperate to get her baby boy back after he is taken. When she learns of a way to get her son home, her husband (Charlie Barnett) begins to suspect the baby that returned is not actually theirs. It sits at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes out of the fest’s Midnighter section.
His WME signing comes as filmmakers who cut their teeth online are front and center. Backrooms‘ Kane Parsons became the youngest filmmaker ever to open a film at No. 1 last weekend, with the feature already standing as A24’s highest grossing movie of all time domestically. Barker’s Obsession stands as Focus’ top grossing movie of all time domestically, and had an incredibly rare second and third weekend increase at the box office.
The Hollywood Reporter recently informally surveyed agents, managers and executives to name who from that world is poised for a breakout, and Phillips was among those names.
