Breeder's Seven-Year Climb: 300 Nos, a Dead iPad and $75,000 to Start

"Alex Goyette spent seven years financing Breeder, the horror feature he wrote, directed and edited, he told No Film School. The film, which premiered at Tribeca and is credited to IFC, opened nationwide on Oct. 28. It stars Daniel Doheny, Dot-Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips and Tanaya Beatty as a college student who takes money from a poodle breeder on the condition that he breed with her daughter.

Goyette first pitched the project at Tribeca's Creators Market in 2019, where his iPad died just before the pitch. The original plan was a $250,000 shoot. Backers fell away, one over the film's sexual content and another after promising $500,000 and disappearing. The first money, $75,000 from a friend of a friend, let the team describe the film as ""partially financed,"" which Goyette said made outreach easier. The script won the Grand Prize at the 2023 Cinequest Screenwriting Competition and was recommended on The Black List. A chain of introductions reached K. Asher Levin at Rabbits Black, and a finance deal came within two weeks.

The team counted about 300 rejections, he said. Without a budget for a storyboard artist, Goyette boarded the film himself, drawing over 3D scans and logging every shot's lens, gear and movement in a 72-page document he carried on set."