Joe Augustyn

Joe Augustyn created the horror movie franchise "Night of the Demons" - writing and producing the first film, and later writing the second one based on story elements by playwright James Penzi. His second film was "Night Angel", an ambitious effort based on the legend of Lilith. His health seriously compromised by that grueling experience he gave up producing to focus on writing. Since then he's completed assignments for countless producers and companies like Tristar, Propaganda and Anonymous Content; optioned several of his specs and authored a handful of books. His novels include "The Nine Lives of Felicia Miller", a story of witchcraft and shapeshifting, and "Dead Rain", an epic zombie adventure. He also wrote a book of true ghost stories that included an in-depth look at the strange case of Wright the "ghostwriter" - a bizarre case which has been extensively investigated but never debunked. Joe won minor awards as a painter in his teens and was a published underground cartoonist before choosing to study film. He won a Nissan FOCUS Award for a paper he wrote at Temple University. A freshman at the time, he was the only undergrad among eleven graduate student winners that year and was subsequently accepted as a producing fellow at AFI's Center For Advanced Film Studies. While at AFI, Joe worked on a record number of student video and film productions, doing sound work, craft services, assistant directing as well as producing, and became a close associate of classmates Steve Golin and Joni Sighvatsson, who would later found Propaganda Films. Following graduation, he worked with Steve and Joni on their first two features, serving as production and location coordinators on "Hard Rock Zombies" and "American Drive-in" before branching out as a producer on his own. In 2001 he returned to Philadelphia where he continues writing books, short stories and screenplays.