Sullivan's career began as a teenager when he landed a job as a production assistant on the 1983 cult horror film Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn.

After working in development at New Line Cinema for five years, Sullivan's mainstream directorial debut was the well-received Lion's Gate's horror-comedy,[4][unreliable source?]

This was followed by Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (2005) (as co-writer and producer) and Driftwood (2006), a supernatural thriller about troubled youths at a reform camp, starring Raviv Ullman and Diamond Dallas Page.

[citation needed] Re-joining forces with Detroit Rock City director Adam Rifkin for the comedy/horror anthology Chillerama (2011), Sullivan contributed the musical segment I Was a Teenage Werebear starring Sean Paul Lockhart, followed by the Rifkin written and directed Burt Reynolds vehicle The Last Movie Star (2017), on which Sullivan earned an Associate Producer credit.

[citation needed] It was during this time Sullivan formed his own production company, New Rebellion Entertainment.,[8][9] (with partners Diamond Dallas Page, Mike Markoff, Cooper Tomlinson and Nick Levay), creating and developing a variety of projects he will produce and direct in 2022, among them the George A. Romero’s version of Masque of the Red Death (in partnership with Dark Horse Entertainment and written by Steve Niles), and the Night Songs, which explores the paranormal romance between a music journalist and a vampiric young rock star featuring songs co-written by Sullivan with Doug Rockwell, Andreas Carlsson and Eric Singer of KISS.