Independent writer/director/producer Kevin Tenney was born in Honolulu. He hails from a military family and grew up in Hawaii, Bermuda, and California. Kevin made his first super 8mm movie in the sixth grade, utilizing his friends and neighborhood kids as actors.
After graduatiing high school and junior college, Kevin was accepted to the Cinema/Television Department of the University of Southern California, where only the top five percent of students are given the opportunity to direct either a senior project or a graduate film. Kevin was (and still is) the only student in the University’s history to direct one of each.
His senior project won an Emmy Award for the Best Student Production of The Year, and his graduate film landed him an agent at ICM and a three-picture deal with producer, Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins, Stripes) while he was still a student at U.S.C.
He then left the university early for his professional directorial debut, “Witchboard”. It was made for less than one million dollars and grossed over eight million at the box office, where it opened as the fifth highest grossing film of the week on 1,000 screens. It went on to sell nearly 100,000 video cassettes in its initial run and then premiered on HBO as their highest rated show of the week, beating out bigger, studio-produced films and HBO’s own original programming.
Kevin’s sophomore film, “Night Of The Demons,” was picked up by international distributor Republic Pictures for the highest price they had ever paid for an acquisition at that time. The film grossed more than three million in a limited U.S. theatrical run and became a highly regarded cult hit, inspiring two sequels and a big-budget remake. Thirty years later, the film still has a rabid fan base.
Kevin has since written, directed, and/or produced more than a dozen independent films. Four of his films went on to become the top grossing films of all time for their individual distributors. Two of these four films were produced by his first production company, Mentone Pictures. Kevin’s second company, Prodigy Entertainment, produced two films, the horror/comedy “Brain Dead”, which went on to garner five Best Feature Awards and five Best Make-Up FX Awards at various film festivals around the world as well as the re-make of “Night Of The Demons”, which was chosen out of thousands of films to open the ScreamFest International Film Festival when it premiered in Hollywood.
Although best know for his horror movies, Kevin has also directed the action films, “Peacemaker” and “Demolition University”, the neo-noir thriller, “Tick-Tock”, and the family adventure, “Bigfoot”. He is presently writing his first novel and prepping a new horror film.