About Dreaming Ants

Steve and Michael are a filmmaking team united by a shared love of high concept stories that can be told in economically feasible ways. Steve directs, Michael produces, and they write together.

While united in tastes, these two come from vastly different backgrounds. The son of an immigrant and orphan, Steve hails from Chicago and dressed up as a film director for his 2nd grade career fair. Of course, he didn’t know what a film director actually looked like at age eight, and his costume wound up looking more like Indiana Jones. Michael enjoyed a more nomadic upbringing, moving from Iowa to Colorado to Washington State to California, where he studied everything from photography, to aeronautical engineering, to computer science, before finding his home in storytelling. Fate brought this filmmaking duo together when they were enrolled at USC’s Film School.

Since graduating, Steve and Michael have worked hard to cement their voice and style, and others are noticing. They co-wrote the feature film, Knock at the Cabin, which is based on the award winning novel by Paul Tremblay and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It was released theatrically by Universal Studios and opened #1 at the box office, becoming the first film of 2023 to dethrone Avatar: The Way of Water from the top spot. They have a second feature film in production at Paramount, which will be released theatrically in the fall of 2024.

Over the past few years, Steve and Michael’s feature screenplays have been voted onto the prestigious industry Black List four times. The Saturday Night Ghost Club, based on the acclaimed novel by Craig Davidson, has Steve attached to direct and Michael attached to produce alongside Brad Fuller (“A Quiet Place”) and Alex Ginno (“Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”) of Fuller Media. They adapted Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers from a Hugo Award winning short story and sold it to Warner Bros in a bidding war, with Oscar Nominated Producer Andrew Lazar (“American Sniper”) producing via his Mad Chance production banner. It also became the only script of its year to land in the top 5 on both the Black List and Hit List. Their previous script, Orb, made the Black ListHit List, and was voted #1 on the Blood List.

Their short film, Monsters, which Steve directed and Michael produced, has amassed over 2 million views and screened at more than 100 film festivals around the world, winning 46 awards including Best Short Film at the Comic-Con International Film Festival, along with being named a Vimeo Staff Pick.

Currently, Steve and Michael are adapting Michael’s novella, “The Time Runner,” for Paramount Pictures with Wes Ball (“The Maze Runner”) attached to direct, and working on their own sci-fi adventure novel.