Dallas Sonnier

Sonnier's has stated that his approach to production is giving total creative freedom to writers and directors while also keeping budgets low enough that their projects can still be profitable. In interviews, he has been adamant about not making films that “pander” to any audience, as well as not filtering directors’ creativity. His business model relies on making films as widely available as possible—through purchase, rental, or streaming—on multiple platforms to “piece together” revenue from every possible source.

Dallas Sonnier is an American film producer, publisher, and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of Cinestate and, from 2018, the publisher of Fangoria magazine. He has producing credits on the films Bone Tomahawk (2015), Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2018), and Dragged Across Concrete (2019), among others. In 2018, he purchased the rights to Fangoria and relaunched the defunct magazine as a print-only publication; he additionally expanded the Fangoria brand to encompass a publishing and film production company.

In 2018, Sonnier completed the deal to acquire all the assets and trademarks of the Fangoria brand, including the horror movie magazine, and relaunched it as a division of Cinestate. Fangoria Magazine became print only and Sonnier hired a brand-new editor-in-chief, Phil Nobile Jr. of Birth.Movies.Death. As part of the arrangement, Cinestate controls all material from over 300 issues of Fangoria Magazine, which means all articles, photos, and exclusive interviews, spanning the past 40 years. Sonnier and his team are further developing Fangoria into a brand for producing movies and podcasts, as well as publishing horror novels.

Beginning his career as an agent, Sonnier later gravitated towards production, initially founding the California-based Caliber Media with partner Jack Heller. Wanting to bring major film productions to the state of Texas, he returned there in 2016 to found the Dallas-based production company Cinestate.

Zahler's script attracted Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins, but the interested financiers wanted the script shortened. After several years of negotiations, Russell's agents were ready to move on if the movie was not fully financed in a matter of months. To secure financing for the film, in 2014, Sonnier took a new mortgage on his house. The film went on to become a financial and critical success, earning $10 million, a figure five times its $5 million budget, and garnering a 91% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

After graduating from USC, Sonnier obtained a job with United Talent Agency, beginning in the mailroom and working his way up to Agent Trainee. After a few years, he left the agency to join a start-up management firm run by David Schiff. In 2008, Sonnier and Jack Heller, a USC classmate, founded Caliber Media. While attending San Diego Comic Con, the pair met former wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, eventually collaborating with him on nine low-budget action movies that were sold to distributors and premiered on DVD and video-on-demand. Caliber segued into other independent projects before raising funds for two years in order to shoot Bone Tomahawk; the script had been written by one of the pair's clients, S. Craig Zahler, whom they had been managing for two years.

Dallas Sonnier was born Joseph Albert Sonnier IV in the Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, US. His parents, Becky and Dr. Joseph Sonnier moved from Shreveport, Louisiana to Dallas, Texas, shortly before he was born in 1980. Sonnier's nickname originated with his parents referring to him as “the Dallas baby” and the moniker stuck with him throughout his life.