News

The tragic 2009 boating accident that claimed the lives of former University of South Florida football player Will Bleakley and ex-Tampa Bay Buccaneers teammates Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith is now being depicted onscreen by survivor Nick Schuyler.

The new documentary “Four Down” is based on Schuyler’s bestselling 2010 memoir “Not Without Hope,” which details his rescue at sea in the Gulf of Mexico. Schuyler was found near-death 43 hours after the accident, clinging to the engine mount of the capsized vessel 70 miles offshore. Oscar nominee Steven Cantor directs the hybrid documentary, which includes reenactment sequences featuring U.S. Coast Guard members and officers. “Four Down” is executive produced by Mark Wahlberg and Snoop Dogg.

The film includes interviews with Schuyler, members of the NFL community, and the U.S. Coast Guard, which was involved in the massive search and rescue effort. The feature was filmed on location in St. Petersburg, Clearwater,...

Even as California Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to halt a production exodus from Los Angeles with a pledge to double the film and TV tax incentive from $330 million to $750 million a year, producers are finding abundant new and cheaper soundstage options in far-flung locations. That’s judging by the number of film studios, lots and facilities under construction throughout North America and in Europe, many hoping to capitalize on Hollywood projects that are on the move. Even stateside, it’s not just established rivals Georgia, New Jersey and New York — a trio cited by studio execs recently polled by ProdPro as among preferred locations this year — that California needs to worry about.

Take Louisville, Kentucky, not exactly known as a production hub. Gus Van Sant’s upcoming crime feature Dead Man’s Wire and Dustin Hoffman drama The Revisionist nabbed incentives to shoot in the locale. And plans are underway for...

“Four Down,” a documentary based on Nick Schuyler and Jere Longman’s best-selling book “Not Without Hope,” will open the 20th edition of the Sunscreen Film Festival on April 24 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Directed by Steven Cantor, the docu examines Schuyler’s harrowing 2009 rescue by the U.S. Coast Guard, 43 hours after a tragic boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico claimed the lives of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, and Schuyler’s best friend and former University of South Florida teammate Will Bleakley. Schuyler was found near death, clinging to the engine mount of the capsized vessel 70 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

The 95-minute hybrid doc was filmed on location in St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, and at Lantica Studios in the Dominican Republic. For the film’s reenactment sequences, Cantor enlisted current commissioned U.S. Coast Guard members and officers. Interviews with Schuyler, members of the NFL community,...

Shout! Studios has acquired North American distribution rights to family adventure feature “Pet Investigators” from indie European distributor Plaion Pictures.

The deal was negotiated by Shout! Studios’ executive VP Melissa Boag, Mark Balsam, Bruce Eisen of Eisen Law, and Steven Katz, Shout’s VP of business affairs, and film writer and producer Werner Kienberger of Plaion. Sola Media is selling remaining territories at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM).

The family-oriented mystery, directed by Brent Ryan Green from a script by Sebastian Brummer, Werner Kienberger and B. Dave Walters, follows three teens and their canine companion as they investigate a series of neighborhood pet disappearances, ultimately uncovering a bumbling crime ring of animal thieves.

Rising talents Gabriella Sophia Terrero (“The Truth About Santa Claus”), Peyton Jackson (“Best Foot Forward”) and Joseph Lee (“An-de-lu”) lead the cast, with support from television veterans David Faustino (“Entourage”), Corin Nemec (“Parker Lewis Can’t...

Exclusive: Steven Demmler’s Talon Entertainment has hired Tony Armer, an industry veteran known for his tenure as Film Commissioner of Dallas and St. Petersburg, as its first Head of Physical Production.

In his new role, Armer will work alongside Demmler to oversee all physical production as the company prepares to open its gates to the Dallas-based South Side Studios.

Talon CEO Demmler purchased South Side Studios, an 11-acre film studio and sound stage facility, earlier this year, and has seen it undergo renovations and upgrades ahead of its reopening later this year. The soundstages are less than two miles from Dallas’ city center and boast 70,000 square-feet of studio space and 50,000 square-feet of office space.

Demmler also has a stake in St. Petersburg’s Coastal Creative, a 25,000 square-foot production facility that also operates as a black box theater and features special event programming. Last weekend, Coastal Creative, in partnership with the Sunscreen Film Festival,...

Dallas Film Commission’s Tony Armer, British Film Commission’s Abee McCallum, and Brand South Africa’s Jimmy Ranamane were among the TV and film industry executives who came together to discuss the advancements happening in sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (Dei) in the global production sector and what is needed to make sure those initiatives grow.

The roundtable conversation took place on Screen’s terrace at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of the Global Production Awards at the festival on Monday May 20.

Luke Azavedo, vice president of Calgary Economic Development, is also vice chair of the Association of...

The future of sales, production and virtual markets during the pandemic were discussed in the latest ScreenDaily Talks webinar.

The ongoing disruption to the film business caused by the virus crisis is generating opportunity as well as uncertainty according to a panel of US indie producers and sales executives on the eve of the first online American Film Market (AFM).

“There are a lot of people looking for content right now,” said Brian Beckmann, CFO of Arclight Films. ”We’ve had nine months with very few productions getting off the ground… so we’re going to run into a supply and demand issue.

The latest in our ScreenDaily Talks live Q&a series will take place today at 5pm UK time (9am US West Coast).

The latest in our ScreenDaily Talks live Q&a series will take place on Thursday November 5 at 5pm UK time (9am US West Coast) and will take the temperature of the independent film business on the eve of AFM 2020 Online.

Click here to register

This instalment is sponsored by the St Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission in Florida.

Key players in the film and independent sector will discuss the ongoing impact of the pandemic on their business, particularly production and sales.

The latest in our ScreenDaily Talks live Q&a series will take place on Thursday November 5 at 5pm UK time (9am US West Coast).

The latest in our ScreenDaily Talks live Q&a series will take place on Thursday November 5 at 5pm UK time (9am US West Coast) and will take the temperature of the independent film business on the eve of AFM 2020 Online.

Click here to register

This instalment is sponsored by the St Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission in Florida.

Key players in the film and independent sector will discuss the ongoing impact of the pandemic on their business,...

Christina Ricci, Tom Hopper, and David Dastmalchian will star together in the independent action-thriller “Can’t Stop the Dawn.”

Ambi Distribution, the worldwide sales arm of the Ambi Media Group, is handling global sales and is introducing the project to buyers at the Cannes Virtual Market. Principal photography on “Can’t Stop the Dawn” will commence this fall in New Orleans.

Marianna Palka is directing “Can’t Stop the Dawn.” Tony Armer, Marty Poole (Fairway Film Alliance), Michael E. Brown, Ramfis Myrthil and Jory Weitz are producing. Executive producers are Santosh Govindaraju and Dan Reardon.

Tony Armer wrote the screenplay, based on an original concept by Dale Pople. Ricci will portray a terminally ill single mom recruited by Hoper’s mysterious agent to assassinate Dastmalchian’s ruthless leader of a human trafficking ring for the promise of a better future for her son.

Palka said, “I am so passionate about ‘Can’t Stop the Dawn.

“There aren’t going to be as many people employed as previously.”

“Smaller, independent units” are the key to restarting film and TV production worldwide according to the panel of locations and production experts taking part in the latest episode of Screen Talks, which was sponsored by the St Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission.

Addressing the worldwide spread of the coronavirus, UK line producer and unit production manager Sam Breckman said, “There will be a second spike. And if we don’t keep ourselves to ourselves – which is unlikely to happen, because after eight weeks we’re going stir crazy – it’s smaller,...

The Talk is scheduled for Wednesday, May 13 at 16:30 BST, and is sponsored by St Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission.

The latest in our Screen Talks live Q&a series will be co-hosted by our sister publication Kftv and will take place on Wednesday May 13 at 16:30 BST. It will explore how international production companies can prepare for the global locations landscape once we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. This episode of Screen Talks is sponsored by St Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission.

Click here to register

The Talk will address which countries are already opening up to productions and what can...

Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi’s Ambi Media Group is re-teaming with Kirk Harris and Marty Poole’s Fairway Films Alliance to finance and produce a sequel to “Bernie the Dolphin.”

Lola Sultan, Patrick Muldoon, Logan Allen, Kevin Sorbo, and Dahlia Legault (“The Walking Dead”) will reprise their roles in the family dolphin adventure. Ambi Distribution, the worldwide sales arm of the Ambi Media Group, will be introducing the project to international distributors at the American Film Market, which opened Oct. 31.

“Bernie the Dolphin 2” will shoot on location at Marineland Dolphin Adventure in St. Augustine, Fla., as well as in St. Petersburg-Clearwater starting in December.

Kirk Harris will direct “Bernie the Dolphin 2” from a screenplay written by Emerson and Poole, who are also producing along with Ambi principals Iervolino and Bacardi, as well as Tony Armer, the film commissioner for St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. Digital Caviar is the Florida based production partner.

In today’s film news roundup, Craig Sheffer and Fred Hechinger score movie roles and pop singer Nicole Michelle records two songs for “Bernie the Dolphin.”

Castings

Craig Sheffer has been cast as the lead in Gregory Lamberson’s feature film adaptation of “Widow’s Point,” the supernatural book co-written by Richard Chizmar and his son Billy.

Lamberson will direct the film from his own screenplay in Western New York this month, co-producing with Tamar Lamberson. Chizmar executive produces with Erin Elizabeth Heald.

“Widow’s Point” depicts the tale of an author who spends a weekend locked in a haunted lighthouse as a publicity stunt to promote his next book. Cut off from the outside world, he finds himself targeted by sinister forces. The film takes place in four different time periods.

Sheffer’s credits include Robert Redford’s “A River Runs Through It,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” and the TV series “One Tree Hill.

Panelists were attending Screen’s World of Locations breakfast at Afm.

Film commissioners from Panama, Namibia and St Petersburg/Clearwater in Florida told an audience of producers and festival programmers of their desire to boost their industries at Screen International’s World of Locations breakfast and panel here on Friday.

“Our industry is growing and we have so many stories to tell,” said Maria Antonia Vergara of Panama Film Commission, which offers a 15% cashback incentive that could rise to 25% within a year once the measure is approved by lawmakers.

Narcotics drama Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio del Toro was the first film to apply for the incentive. The France-Belgium-Spain co-production invested $5m into the local economy and qualified for the incentive because it met the requirements of a $3m minimum spend. That threshold could change to make more productions eligible. This will be of use to local film-makers and meets the mandate of the commission, which was set...

(Tampa, Fl.) February 20, 2012- The new documentary film, Running with Demons , by Tampa Bay Area filmmakers Tony Armer and J. Declan Flynn has just been released for distribution to a worldwide audience.

The film follows Todd Crandell, Professional Counselor (PC) and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor III (Lcdc III), who battled severe alcohol and drug addictions for 13 years. Devastating relationships with family and friends... Read more on Examiner.com...