Meet Würkart Entertainment co-founder Simone C Williams:
To start, please introduce yourself:
Hello, I’m Simone C Williams. I’m a film fan, a producer, craftsperson in practical effects and co-founder of Würkart Entertainment. I feel like I infiltrated horror and I love it! I’m really happy to be on the inside of something I’ve loved since I was a kid. I have a couple of decades of below-the-line credits in practical effects that are horror-adjacent work, but my true breakout horror credit is working as a producer and post supervisor on the film CREEPYPASTA released by Screambox a couple years ago. I’ll be the first to say that it may not be a crowd favorite, but we did it. We dived in feet first when we were offered the opportunity to produce a film that uses the creepypasta genre.
What is horror to you, what makes a work of art one in the horror genre?
I’m going to approach this one like a fan. Horror is what you want it to be. Does a book, film, tv series, comic, artwork or music composition scare you? Intrigue you? Feel icky? Make your heart race and you love it? Chances are you have a strong opinion whether or not it does any of those things. Horror shows us so much about ourselves. Shows us things we may or may not want to think about. I think horror is truly cathartic and is such a great stress reliever. I love knowing that in one week we will watch a schlocky made for tv movie from the 70s one day, a silent or classic horror movie another, and then a brand new big budget release another day while giving all of them the same love and respect.
What made you want to work in horror?
I’ve always been horror-adjacent in life and work, but I leaned more towards science fiction. ALIENS was one of the films that clinched it for me as a young person. BLADE RUNNER was the film that made me want to work in movies, somehow, some way. I never planned to work in horror even though I’ve been a fan since childhood of horror: growing up with the Universal monsters when they were being screened on tv, Godzilla movies being screened at the drive-in, made for tv movies no matter how schlocky, comic books, sneaking my father’s Heavy Metal magazines and getting very excited about Halloween every year as a kid. After getting degrees in art and theatre in college, I headed out to L.A. with the sole intention of working in film. I wanted to produce, but didn’t know how to break in at the time. I ended up working now for a couple decades in creature effects shops and with puppets as a fabricator and costumemaker. Basically working on anything that is sewn to facilitate a practical effect and get it on the performer. Name a horror movie and I can tell you the creature and make-up effects team. Have a head filled with that kind of knowledge was my in when I jumped into the horror world.
It was my partner Gregory Burkart that opened up the horror world for me. I had always said I really liked John Carpenter, but I was a THING person. When I started dating Greg I got my chance to get a crash course in Horror and learn to be a HALLOWEEN person (and a THEY LIVE person, and a FOG person. You get the picture!) It wasn’t hard because I had already been doing one thing for a long time and was open to learning some new things. Greg was an editor at Blumhouse.com at the time when Blumhouse still had a horror news website. Getting together and getting excited about horror was really a meet-cute like Aladdin showing Jasmine “a whole new world.” We got together the first time to see CARRIE at an outdoor screening and then our first dates were him inviting me to RE-ANIMATOR THE MUSICAL live and me inviting him toa GWAR Art Show tribute to Dave Brockie.
Besides becoming a heavy consumer, I learned how “outsider” horror was, still is and how it is always underestimated. I learned how independent horror filmmaking is probably the best incubator for talent. How horror is like the heavy metal of movies– not everyone likes it but the fans are incredibly loyal. And how horror is like the porn of filmmaking- a lot of people look down on it but no one can deny how much money it makes.
I’ve learned more about the craft of filmmaking from getting into horror.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My partner Greg and I play Dead Right Horror Trivia once a month in Burbank with about 150 other people and we love it. No matter what is going on, we never miss a game. I gotta say I get a lot of inspiration from that. It’s our church and our sports ball. I like being there and just absorbing things. Almost everyone in the room has written, directed, produced and/or acted in a horror film or series. We’re competitive when it comes to winning the rounds of trivia but we’re supportive of each other when we hear what someone is working on, where to find their short film or published books or to congratulate them on getting their film distributed. Getting distribution is major! We should pass out cigars.
What would you like your legacy to be in the genre (or elsewhere)?
That I was a good person with a moral compass. It’s a simple thing but I think it means a lot right now. I like going to sleep at night knowing my work has contributed a little something to the world or at the very least, has done no harm.
What is Women in Horror Month to you and why is it still important this many years later?
It’s 2025 and I don’t see a ton of change since all the scrambling to find “binders of women” a couple years ago to direct horror movies. Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe it has gotten a lot better and I need to do my homework. But it still feels like a Sausage Fest out there. It doesn’t help that production in Los Angeles is at a stand-still and it’s in bad shape in other production heavy states. So Women in Horror Month needs to be out in our faces to remind us women and women-identifying still aren’t getting the breaks.
Who are some of the Women in Horror who you look up to and who do you want to bring attention to in your field or others?
The first person who comes to mind is director and photographer Ama Lea. I know her and I’ve never seen someone do so many things! She has been hustling for years and she deserves all the praises. One day she will be photographing a horror luminary for a magazine cover (Corman and Cronenberg!), directing a short one day and the next day rehearsing a fashion show for her lingerie line, Poltergeists and Paramours. She is one of the hardest working people I know.
I also want to give kudos to one of our executive producers on CREEPYPASTA, Corinne Ferguson. She is the CEO of NYX Media (aka Scream Tv, a fast channel on Distro in the US) and was also a producer on Anthony DiBlasi’s EXTREMITY. Everyone on CREEPYPASTA wore many hats and did many jobs. Corinne also worked as our accountant and was my direct report as I hired vendors for post. It was such a great experience to be supported, mentored and trusted to do a job I was pretty much doing for the first time ever.
What are you currently working on that you can tell us about?
I’m currently attached to an indie feature film titled THEIRS with a lot of our crew from CREEPYPASTA. The director on THEIRS is Sonja O’Hara, the director of MID-CENTURY , and it has actors Rita Moreno, Udo Kier and Harvey Keitel attached. I’m really stoked for this to happen. Things have been really rough in the industry for a couple years now. Thinking about the dust clearing and this film happening is keeping me going. (I have FROM DUSK TIL DAWN playing as I work on this so it’s a little reminder to myself that l love horror and to not give up. )
Where can readers keep up with you?
Here is the Instagram for our production company, Würkart Entertainment
