BUFFALONICKELFILMS INC.Back to studio 
Michael's AI · Available nowTalk story with Michael's AIScreenwriting · Worldbuilding · AI filmThe founder
Writer · Director · Author · Performer · Showrunner
MICHAEL McGRUTHER · FOUNDER
A working storyteller building original worlds across screen, page, and sound.
Michael McGruther is a multidisciplinary storyteller whose career spans performance, feature-film screenwriting, directing, independent publishing, cultural commentary, and serialized entertainment.
He founded Buffalonickel Films Inc. to bring those disciplines together under one roof: an independent studio where the story, the production, and the relationship with the audience remain connected.
Professional history
Founder & Showrunner · 2024–Present
Creator of Long Haulers, an independently produced serialized science-fiction series about work, friendship, and keeping the ship together. Michael oversees its writing, direction, performance, scoring, editing, and world architecture.
Michael's screenplay for Tigerland became the Joel Schumacher film that introduced Colin Farrell to American audiences. Additional screenplays were sold to Universal Pictures and developed with major studio partners. His short-film work includes Blood Son and the collaborative production The Last Tiffin.
Through the independent Hosel & Ferrule imprint, Michael has published The Puddle Club, Crisis Moon, The Secrets of Tiantong, The Tracks We Make, and OMIM. His fiction moves between coming-of-age, geopolitical science fiction, adventure, and stories designed to travel across cultures.
As founder and host of SubPopCult, Michael has produced more than 150 episodes about storytelling, media, power, popular culture, and the independent imagination. The podcast and its essays treat culture as a story people build together.
Michael's performance work includes the lead role in a Nickelodeon pilot, national television commercial campaigns, and the role of the Prince in a national touring production of Rapunzel.
THE THROUGH LINE