File_get_contents - Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!

Hey, basic php function file_get_content every time times out into a "Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!".

My setup:

• file is located on the drive
• file is accessible via browser
• I'm using localhost environment with HTTP
• file name does not contain special characters (http://localhost:8000/images/cross.png)

I've tried:

• checking php.ini for allow_url_fopen to true
• adding request header

$opts = array('http'=>array('header' => "User-Agent:MyAgent/1.0\r\n"));
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$file = file_get_contents(asset('images/cross.png'), false, $context);

• opening different image on the internet - that WORKS
• opening different image on disk - doesn't work

Any idea why it's not working? I originally wanted to perform imagecreatefrompng() function and I figured out that basic file_get_contents doesn't work.