CURRENT PRODUCTIONS
GENERATED CONCEPT ART
WELL KEPT
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA SHORT FILM · LIMITED SERIES ADAPTATION INTENDED
In the late 1980s, a social worker travels to a small Newfoundland community to take a formal statement from a boy who survived a night of violence. His account is fragmented and dreamlike, populated by figures of dread that feel almost supernatural. But as the deposition unfolds, a darker and more sinister truth surfaces beneath the protective layers of his telling. What he describes as monsters are revealed to be ordinary men, and what actually happened that night, and what the boy was made to be a part of, is far more devastating than anything he was willing to say.
CONCEPT ART
WOMEN OF THE NORTH
DOCUMENTARY LIMITED SERIES
Before there were institutions, before there were written records, before any of the structures the modern world calls civilization, there were women doing the work that made all of it possible. They are still doing it. Women of the North is co-created and hosted by Lori McCarthy, a Newfoundland author, forager, and cultural practitioner whose own life has been shaped by the traditions this series is built to celebrate. Each episode takes Lori to a different community on earth, where she sits with the women who carry millennia of knowledge in their hands, their languages, and their daily lives, learning what they know, documenting what they practice, and bearing witness to a way of understanding the world that no university has ever taught and no archive has ever captured. This knowledge is not preserved. It is lived, and it is disappearing.
GENERATED CONCEPT ART
SCAVENGER HUNT
DRAMATIC SHORT FILM · FEATURE ADAPTATION INTENDED
On the first night of summer, five teenagers in a small town set out on a reckless, no-rules scavenger hunt, pushing each other further than any of them planned to go. Alcohol, drugs, and the desperate need to fit in turn a night of bad decisions into something with real and permanent consequences. By the time they reach the one dare nobody meant seriously, the group has already gone too far to stop, and what happens next cannot be undone.
WHO WE ARE
The most important stories are often the most uncomfortable ones to tell.
We are built on the belief that the most important stories are often the most uncomfortable ones. The difficult, the inconvenient, and the ones that are too hard to tell. Those are precisely the ones that need to be told, and our mission is to bring them to screen honestly, unflinchingly, and with the craft and care they deserve.
Saltbox Pictures is an emerging Newfoundland and Labrador production company founded in 2025. We are drawn to what lives underneath the surface of ordinary life, to the parts that are harder to look at and that have gone without a voice for too long. We tell those stories without looking away, and we tell them with the seriousness and conviction they demand.
Over the next five years, Saltbox Pictures will grow from its first short films into a company with a slate of features and series ready for national and international markets. Our two current projects, Scavenger Hunt and Well Kept, are each developed with expansion in mind. Scavenger Hunt is planned as a feature film adaptation, and Well Kept, our primary development priority, is planned as a limited series.
Carla Bateman is an emerging producer based in Newfoundland and Labrador with over a decade of experience leading complex projects in the IT sector. Drawn to storytelling through a deep belief in connection, collaboration, and community, she brings a grounded, thoughtful approach and a strong desire to show the unseen, give voice to the unheard, and reveal difficult truths with purpose and great care. Scavenger Hunt and Well Kept are her first film production credits.
Wes Holmes is a director, producer, and cinematographer based in Newfoundland and Labrador. His work explores the connection between people, place, and culture through character-driven storytelling, with a creative draw to stories that are difficult, overlooked, and shaped by the tensions of lived experience. Since 2014, he has developed and directed original series for Bell Fibe TV1, CBC, NTV, and ETV. Scavenger Hunt and Well Kept will mark his transition into directing scripted fiction.
OUR MISSION
Saltbox Pictures exists because too many of the stories that matter most have gone untold. Not because they lack value, but because they are uncomfortable, inconvenient, or simply too hard to face. We are a company built to face them anyway. Our commitment is to the people, places, and experiences that have been overlooked, and to bringing those stories to screen with honesty, craft, and an unwillingness to look away. That is our mission and that is why we are here.