Joshua Bailey and Brandon Pickering, appeared in Davenport, Iowa, at The Last Picture House on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, with their film about Black Market Disney merchandise, “Stolen Kingdom.”
Writer-Director Josh Bailey is 31. Producer/Cinematographer Brandon Pickering partnered with Bailey in Austin, Texas. where both have day jobs in television. They worked on “Stolen Kingdom” for 5 years. Bailey and Pickering are on a 13-city tour with the film that opened the Florida Film Festival (both are Florida natives). “Stolen Kingdom” has done well on the film festival circuit. It was also well-received by an enthusiastic crowd at this stylish boutique theater in the Quad Cities. Chicago native Shane Simmons, a fellow actor/writer/director joined the duo as moderator for the evening.
The “Stolen Kingdom” team included Joshua Bailey (Writer/Director), Producer/Cinematographer Brandon Pickering, Sam Fraser, and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty (who wrote the score). They have created a well-paced, visually-interesting, absorbing documentary about obsessive behavior that caused one film subject to say of himself, “You look like a psychopath!”
FLORIDA ROOTS
Both Bailey and Pickering are originally from Florida (Tampa). Both worked at Disney (or Universal) theme parks as youths. Pickering mentioned Halloween Horror Night at Universal. He volunteered the information that he was fired. “We both dropped out of the same film school.” (Valencia College in Tampa, Florida). This in-depth knowledge of the Disney World was invaluable to the project. I hope it is not the only subject the two filmmakers are this dedicated to, because it demonstrated real creativity with good pacing, great photography and comedic verve. The entire project also represented a lot of time and effort. Just organizing the material must have been a Herculean task! And now they are on a 13-city tour to cities they have probably never visited, like Davenport, Iowa. (Welcome to the Quad Cities! I’ll see you in Austin.)
Some photography of shadowy figures was impressive artistically and finding Richard McGuire (AKA Southern Pirate), who throws out the batshit theory that Disney is running a “torture prison” on its abandoned island attraction, was Cinematic Gold. (Yikes!)As Bailey told interviewer Simon Thompson in a February 14, 2025 Forbes magazine interview:”I had grown up consuming this content, made by people like Adam The Woo and Leonard Kinsey, some of the previous generation of creators, so when it started up again, we were really intrigued by it.”
However, as Bailey said, “If we don’t have Patrick (Spikes), we don’t have a movie.” He also said, “We were determined to break this barrier of anonymity with Patrick. We met with him one night and gave him fake names.” (The meeting took place at a 7-Eleven behind the Customer Member Parking at the Magic Kingdom in August of 2018.) “We had thought about trying to do this ourselves as urban explorers at Disney against our better judgment, so we created all of these social accounts, and I think that gave him some kind of trust in us. I think we were the first people to meet up with him, figure out who he was, and be boots on the ground with him.
“Patrick told us, ‘I have this and that celebrity’s phone number on speed dial. I call them and say, ‘Hey, I have this prop if you want to buy it.’ So we got in his car and drove around the property. There are a bunch of public roads behind Magic Kingdom, office buildings, and other things, and we found the redhead animatronic that had recently been removed from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. He’s making calls, frantically texting people, and trying to make a deal. We don’t really know what was going on in his head. We left at about four in the morning, went home, and we were like, ‘This needs to be a documentary.'”
Brandon Pickering, Connie Wilson, and Joshua Bailey at The Last Picture House on June 2, 2026.
Patrick, himself, said, “I was the heart of the Black Market for a while.” He rattled on about being offered $75,000 for the Redhead from Pirates of the Caribbean and mentioned being offered $70,000 to steal Buzzy (which, later, he changed to $50,000, claiming he did not steal the animatronic figure). The off-the-wall scenes with the police interviewing Patrick and confiscating his phone and Patrick subsequently faking illness so he might be able to use a hospital phone: priceless black humor, The scenes are inter- woven skillfully, moving on to true tragedy as we learn of the death of Ed “Chief” Barlow, who died from malignant melanoma.
Hoot (real name – Dave Ensign) Gibson met Ed in 1986 and the two loved Disney’s parks, thinking that their jobs there would be a relief from high school bullies and teen age unhappiness. After signing on as Disney employees, however, they realized,”It’s basically high school in a different place.” Still, the two went adventuring in the abandoned attractions many times and became best friends. Dave’s grief at Ed’s passing is palpable. [The focus on these obsessed fans of abandoned sites was treated in a 2005 novel by David Morrell entitled “Creepers.” “Scavenger” in 2007 was the sequel. It’s a whole other world, Folks.] Hoot described himself as grief-stricken after Ed’s death. “I think I’m done being Hoot Gibson for a while. I just don’t care any more.”
We see Hoot scattering the Chief’s ashes at a Disney park.That is not a completely easy task for Dave. He was banned from Disney. Dave/Hoot’s take on stealing from the park is totally different from Patrick’s. Hoot/Dave spoke of stealing costumes and other expensive items as wrong; he seemed to consider it almost sacrilegious. He was genuinely touched and touching when he teared up while remembering his old friend Ed.
The film about a bizarre sub-set of people who obsess about visiting Disney and owning Disney memorabilia reminded me of another great documentary, “Secret Mall Apartment,” which was a hit at SXSW in 2024. https://www.themovieblog.com/2024/03/secret-mall-apartment-is-a-hit-sxsw-2024/
TRENDS TODAY
(L toR) Brandon Pickering, Shane Simmons and Joshua Bailey at the showing of “Stolen Kingdom” at the Last Picture House in Davenport, Iowa, on June 2, 2026.
According to Pickering, they used cameras from their day jobs in Austin television to keep cost(s) down. The film was made on a shoestring—less than $150,000. Currently, two films that are leading the box office on June 2, 2026, were also low-budget movies. “Obsession,” one of the two, rackedup $5.3 million, while the Big Budget film “Star Wars: The Mandalorian” took in only $2.2 million. Working your way up via YouTube is becoming one way for a filmmaker to make it in the industry. Another is to win big on the film festival circuit (Slamdance, Big Sky,et. al. qualify “Stolen Kingdom”). As ABC reported today, Generation Z may just save cinema; going to the movies is becoming fashionable again (along with buying at thrift stores.)
Jake Williams got a shout-out from the duo tonight and assisted some with the making of the film. He runs a YouTube channel (since age 17) that covers bankrupt and abandoned businesses. The two Florida natives —who said “we just found each other” (in Austin)— began their documentary about obsessive Disney fans (known as Pixie Dusters) in 2018, before the theft of Buzzy.
Buzzy had been sitting inside the shuttered attraction Cranium Command for eleven years before the 600-pound theme park remnant disappeared.
What happened to Buzzy?
That is a question that has other YouTube videos debating it. One of the filmmakers this night said, “It’s like the O.J. Simpson thing. There is literally no other suspect” (besides Patrick Spikes). Of course, any number of famous celebrity buyers could have purchased Buzzy via BackDoorDisney.We see Neil Patrick Harris describing a bit of Disney memorabilia that he bid on. Indirectly, Harris called out Jeff Bezos as another top bidder for a piece of Disney history. John Stamos admitted his own desire to own a piece of Disney history (his wife looked less thrilled with Stamos’ passion.)
DENOUEMENT
One famous purchaser who bought a bit of Buzzy’s clothing from Patrick was NBA basketball star Robin Lopez. Lopez was actually to be repaid $10,700 according to the 2020 court sentencing for Patrick Spike and his cousin. The duo was arrested in 2019 and the sentencing in 2020 (no contest) dictated $25,308 in restitution, including the Lopez refund and $6,703 to Disney. Patrick was also sentenced to 10 years of probation and 250 hours of community service.
The film will be rentable by August 1st and is available through Waterbox Video Store.
