Ben Leonberg's Good Boy Could Be the Courage the Cowardly Dog Nightmare We Grew Up Dreading

Good Boy is a dog-perspective haunted-house feature that tracks a pet guarding his owner inside a rural home while disturbances press in. Good Boy premiered in SXSW’s Midnighter lineup and is slated for a U.S. theatrical release on October 3, 2025, with IFC Films handling theatres and Shudder involved in distribution. The story follows Indy, director Ben Leonberg’s real dog, as he reacts to things his human cannot see.

The comparison to Courage the Cowardly Dog fits the core setup. A loyal dog. An isolated house. An owner is slow to perceive the threat. The film uses a grounded POV rather than a talking-animal approach, which keeps the actions within recognisable canine behaviour.

Courage the Cowardly Dog is a Cartoon Network series created by John R. Dilworth that follows a nervous dog protecting his owners, Muriel and Eustace, from bizarre intrusions.

The family lives in a lone farmhouse in “Nowhere,” a literal place name that doubles as a narrative device. “Nowhere” strips away outside help, concentrates every threat inside the home, and resets the family to routine after each ordeal. That closed loop is why a one-house, dog-as-first-sensor story like Good Boy maps so neatly onto the show’s blueprint.

How Good Boy maps onto the farmhouse fear that Courage the Cowardly Dog made famous

The comparison is not only analytic, fans are already labelling it live-action Courage the Cowardly Dog in forum threads, and the film’s official social posts have used #couragethecowardlydog, explicitly naming Courage the Cowardly Dog.

The linkage rests on four elements that readers already understand from Courage the Cowardly Dog. First, the setting is a remote family property. Second, the dog is the first sensor of irregular events. Third, the human is preoccupied or impaired and slow to respond. Fourth, each new intrusion escalates a contained threat inside the house. Leonberg states the design goal in plain terms.

As per Filmmaker Magazine report dated March 9, 2025, Ben Leonberg stated:

“a haunted house movie from an entirely new perspective.”

That perspective is canine. Camera placement sits low. Sound cues are local and diegetic. The audience watches a domestic routine interrupted by incidents that only the dog registers.

Ben Leonberg also stated:

“This isn’t Air Bud or Lassie – where the dog is always happy-go-lucky, clearly acting for food, or listening to an off-camera trainer. My goal was to have Indy behave and act realistically (or as realistically as possible given the film’s supernatural events).”

Those constraints explain why viewers keep invoking Courage the Cowardly Dog and why the analogy is specific rather than casual. Indy is not anthropomorphised. There is no inner monologue. Plot information is carried by staging, objects, and audio inside the rooms.

Good Boy has a 73-minute runtime, which supports a compact structure that limits locations and privileges repeated passes through the same spaces. That mirrors how Courage the Cowardly Dog used a single farmhouse as the stable stage for varied intrusions.

The film’s cast list places Indy alongside Shane Jensen and Larry Fessenden, with Arielle Friedman and Stuart Rudin in support. Those credits, plus the acquisition pattern, provide a verifiable trail from world premiere to release.

Release, runtime, and the production method that sells the concept

Good Boy world-premiered at SXSW 2025 in the Midnighter section at a listed runtime of 73 minutes. IFC Films is the theatrical distributor, with Shudder acquiring English-language territories; the U.S. theatrical date is October 3, 2025.

Leonberg and producer Kari Fischer worked with a single real dog, which dictated time and coverage. As per Filmmaker Magazine report dated March 9, 2025, Ben Leonberg stated:

“We filmed for over 400 days over the course of 3 years. It was an unconventional production by necessity and design. Indy is our family pet, so we had to invent a way of filmmaking that embraced those limitations..”

The team built scenes around repeatable behaviours and then cleared frames to remove trainers in post. The approach remained practical where possible. The production used a safe stand-in only for risk, and a late rain sequence required extended prep and pickups.

Working with animals shaped the schedule. As per a No Film School report dated March 11, 2025, Ben Leonberg stated:

“The film industry is based on 12-hour days, and kids and dogs can work like three. So that means that you're going to be filming either with many dogs, which we did not do. We just filmed with Indy, and he's real. He's not CGI. So that meant that the shooting schedule is just going to be really, really long.”

That constraint explains the long calendar and the emphasis on low-angle single-subject shots. The result is a consistent vantage point that aligns what the audience sees with what a dog could plausibly notice inside a house. It also explains why Good Boy reads as a grounded live-action answer to Courage the Cowardly Dog rather than a stylized homage.

Stay tuned for more updates on Good Boy.