The fantasy animation horror film The Spine of Night from directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King will world premiere as part of the SXSW Midnighters section, taking place virtually next month. NY/LA-based arthouse genre sales company Yellow Veil Pictures have acquired world sales rights on the film.

The Spine of Night is an ultra-violent, hand-rotoscoped epic fantasy inspired by the cult classic works of animators Ralph Bakshi and Frank Franzetta. The film is set in a fantasy land ripe with magic and intrigue where a dark force is unleashed sending mankind into an age of ruin.

It falls on heroes from different eras and cultures to fight back, and stars Richard E. Grant (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Lucy Lawless (Ash Vs. Evil Dead, Xena: Warrior Princess), Patton Oswalt (The Secret Life of Pets 2, Parks and Recreation), Betty Gabriel (Get Out, Upgrade), and Joe Manganiello (Justice League, Spider-Man), also featuring Abby Savage (Orange Is The New Black), and Larry Fessenden (The Dead Don’t Die, Depraved) and Rob McClure.

Directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, in a joint statement, said: “The Spine of Night was made as a bold-faced love letter to a classic style of animation in the service of telling a fantasy story rich in theme and wild in imagination. Given their devotion to boundary-pushing genre material, we can’t imagine a better partner on the film than Yellow Veil.”

A modern throwback to animated films of the 1970s, The Spine of Night is a politically progressive and boundary-pushing feature, and on the pick-up Yellow Veil Pictures Co-Founder Joe Yanick said: “The images born of the classic era of Adult-theme animation are given a new, modern lease on life in The Spine of Night. It’s a seven-year labor of love that offers so much more than nostalgic fluff, but rather mines new depths in a beloved genre.”