Casper Kelly’s ‘Buddy’ Trailer Turns 90s Kids’ TV Into Horror

Casper Kelly’s first feature directorial effort, the children’s-television horror film “Buddy,” opens in U.S. theaters on August 28, 2026, after its January premiere in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival. The film centers on a bright orange unicorn named Buddy, the squeaky-clean host of a 1999-set kids’ show called “It’s Buddy!,” whose “Mr. Rogers-style persona belies his true nature as a dark and violent force of nature,” per the distributor’s announcement. Keegan-Michael Key voices the title character; Cristin Milioti plays a suburban mother who is drawn into the show’s nightmare. Topher Grace, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt, and Delaney Quinn round out the principal cast.

Roadside Attractions and Saban Films acquired North American rights in April 2026, originally dating the release to September 4 before moving it up. Reviews out of Park City gave “Buddy” an 84 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 64 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 31 and 11 reviews respectively. The arrival caps a body of work Kelly has been building since the Adult Swim short “Too Many Cooks” aired in 2014.

Inside the Show Within the Show

The premise is built on a frame inside a frame. In 1999, a group of amnesiac children live inside the episodic world of “It’s Buddy!,” a children’s television show hosted by a “tyrannical Buddy, a bright orange, humanoid unicorn with a purple heart on his chest,” per the film’s plot summary. The children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness, until one of them disappears and the rest begin to defy their captor. Buddy grinds his teeth and sends them on a perilous journey to the mythical Diamond City, while suburban mother Grace (Cristin Milioti) is pulled into Buddy’s “abomination” from the “real world” outside.

The film is described in the distributor’s announcement as one that “embraces the aesthetic of classic children’s television, complete with catchy songs and familiar tropes, before subverting it with a relentless descent into madness.” Roadside Attractions co-presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff called the project “everyone’s favorite movie at Sundance because we watched in horror as the familiar became the deranged and comfort food turned to poison.” The festival review and July 9 trailer write-up framed the premise more plainly: “What if ‘Barney’ was a horror movie?” The same review called Kelly’s work a “nesting doll of media” built from “disposable family media from the ’80s and ’90s” and “hand-crafted set design and puppetry.” Kelly’s method has been to start inside the most generic TV-language he can find and let the audience realize too late which show they were really watching.

Kelly fills the broadcast world with the toys and company mascots a Saturday-morning lineup would have included. Buddy the Unicorn (Key, in a voice performance with Sergey Zhuravsky on motion capture) presides from a wacky clubhouse; Strappy (Patton Oswalt) is a backpack that talks; Charlie the Train and a ventriloquist doll named Willie are both played by Michael Shannon. Clint Howard plays George, a deranged Howdy Doody-style cowboy puppet; Cristin Milioti’s Grace and her on-screen husband Ben (Topher Grace) anchor the side of the story set in the world outside the broadcast.

A Decade of Stalking the Same TV Screen

“Buddy” lands as the first feature directed by Kelly under his own name, but the instincts behind it trace back to his earliest Adult Swim work. His 2014 short “Too Many Cooks” turned a generic 1980s sitcom opening into a viral horror serial, layering a killer into the credits and stretching a sitcom into something nightmarish. The Adult Swim series “Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell” extended that premise across episodes, and Kelly then wrote the “Cheddar Goblin” sequence in Panos Cosmatos’ 2018 film “Mandy.” His feature “Adult Swim Yule Log” used a Christmas TV broadcast as the entry point for a meta-horror film.

“Buddy” is the first time he has applied the method to children’s programming, the ur-text for the kind of disposable family media he keeps returning to. Kelly co-wrote the screenplay with Jamie King; producers include Tyler Davidson and Drew Sykes of Low Spark Films, alongside Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, and Tracy Rosenblum of BoulderLight Pictures. Filming took place in Northeast Ohio, in Brooklyn, Solon, and Burton.

From Park City to a Nationwide Run

“Buddy” premiered on January 22, 2026, in the Midnight section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, per the festival listing that includes runtime and credits. Roadside Attractions and Saban Films acquired North American rights in April 2026, per the April 2026 distribution announcement, originally dating the release to September 4 before moving it up to Friday, August 28, 2026.

Critics at Park City were immediate. The festival review called the premiere “an immediate hit, with critics and audiences alike praising it for capturing the magic of Kelly’s earlier projects on a much larger scale.” Saban Films co-presidents Jonathan Saba and Shanan Becker described Kelly in the announcement as “one of the most wildly inventive and audacious filmmakers working today” and called “Buddy” a testament to “a rare aptitude for taking the wholesome nostalgia of our childhoods and flipping it into a brilliantly unhinged, laugh-out-loud nightmare.” The film runs 95 minutes.

Per Rotten Tomatoes, 84 percent of 31 critics’ reviews of “Buddy” are positive, and Metacritic assigns the film a score of 64 out of 100 based on 11 critics, which the site categorizes as “generally favorable.” The IndieWire review described the film as one that “proceeds to take audiences down a rabbit hole that transcends mediums and timelines as a group of cute kids try to figure out how to stop a giant orange unicorn from murdering them.” The festival’s own description strips it down further: a brave girl and her friends “must escape a kids’ television show.”

The official teaser trailer Roadside released on July 9, 2026, splices shots of Buddy dancing with children against moments in which the candy palette gives way. Roadside positioned the trailer as part of the lead-up to the film’s late-August theatrical bow.

• U.S. release date: August 28, 2026
• Festival premiere: Sundance Midnight, January 22, 2026
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes: 84 percent positive (31 reviews)
• Metacritic: 64 out of 100 (11 critics)

Why Children’s TV Bends So Easily to Dread

The film applies Kelly’s method to the corner IndieWire calls “disposable family media from the ’80s and ’90s”: the kind of programming whose promise is that everything, every week, is fine. Its distributor described “Buddy” as one that “embraces the aesthetic of classic children’s television, complete with catchy songs and familiar tropes, before subverting it with a relentless descent into madness.” Stripped down to the festival’s own logline, the premise becomes a single sentence: a brave girl and her friends “must escape a kids’ television show.” The whole pitch, IndieWire wrote, condenses to three words: “What if ‘Barney’ was a horror movie?”

“Buddy” is also the first Kelly project built to be experienced in a theater full of people. In the announcement of the Roadside Attractions deal, the director framed the work as one he had made specifically for that context.

It’s an honor to be partnering with Roadside Attractions and Saban Films, two companies that have built reputations for championing bold films. The theatrical experience means so much to me personally, and I made BUDDY to be experienced in a theater. I’m thrilled that audiences will get the chance to see the movie in theaters everywhere.

Casper Kelly, the writer and director, made that statement in the distributor’s April 2026 announcement of the Roadside Attractions deal. That announcement describes Buddy’s on-camera register as a “Mr. Rogers-style persona” that masks the violence underneath, with the dissonance between the two pitched as the film’s whole point. Roadside has carried that framing into its public positioning since the deal was struck.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does ‘Buddy’ open in theaters?

“Buddy” opens in U.S. theaters on August 28, 2026. Roadside Attractions and Saban Films are distributing the film in North America after acquiring rights in April 2026, having originally dated the release to September 4.

What is ‘Buddy’ about?

Set in 1999, the film follows a group of amnesiac children trapped inside a fictional children’s television show called “It’s Buddy!” When one child disappears, the show’s unicorn host turns violent. The story cuts between the show’s reality and a suburban mother in the “real world” who becomes involved.

Who is Casper Kelly?

Kelly is the writer and director of “Buddy.” He is the creator of the 2014 Adult Swim short “Too Many Cooks,” the show “Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell,” the “Cheddar Goblin” sequence in “Mandy” (2018), and the feature “Adult Swim Yule Log.” “Buddy” is his first feature directing under his own name.

What is ‘It’s Buddy!’ in the movie?

“It’s Buddy!” is the fictional in-universe children’s television show at the center of the film. The plot treats the show as a literal world that holds the child characters captive, not merely a program they watch from a distance.

How did ‘Buddy’ perform at Sundance?

“Buddy” premiered January 22, 2026, in the Midnight section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. According to Rotten Tomatoes, 84 percent of 31 critics’ reviews are positive; Metacritic assigns the film a score of 64 out of 100 based on 11 critics, which the site labels “generally favorable.”