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Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “Daruma,” a new film about healing and forgiveness featuring disability advocates and actors Tobias Forrest and John W. Lawson. In select theaters since November 15th and available for digital download on Apple TV+ and Prime Video.

Patrick (Tobias Forrest) is an aimless military veteran, living off a disability pension with no direction toward the future. Everything changes when he learns he has a daughter named Camilla (Victoria Scott), and her mother has just died, leaving Patrick an insurance stake to care for his child. The unprepared and reluctant parent takes her in, but the fit isn’t working. Desperate, he asks an estranged and angry neighbor Robert (John Lawson) to transport them to Camilla’s grandparents, and the road trip becomes the metaphor for establishing some new goals.

”Daruma” is in In select theaters since November 15th and available for...

Disability has had such little representation in movies that the ones that do feature characters with disabilities often come down to them overcoming it like it is a problem in the first place. The filmmaking duo of director Alexander Yellen and writer Kelli McNeil wanted their film “Daruma” to be anything but that. McNeil, who has been working on the script since 2007 wanted her story to be representative of the community but also not force you to have a sympathetic gaze towards it. The result is a bittersweet indie drama that Sundance was once known to screen in the early 2000s.

Premiered to 2 jam-packed screenings at the Slamdance Film Festival (the neighboring festival that now hosts the actual made-for-Sundance indies) thanks to McNeil’s brilliant marketing strategy, “Daruma” is the story of a paraplegic – a bitter war-veteran named Patrick (Tobias Forrest) who has been cashing on his disability checks splurging...

Exclusive: Freestyle Digital Media, the digital film distribution division of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group, has acquired North American rights to Daruma, an indie drama exec produced by Oscar winner Peter Farrelly (Green Book).

Believed to be the first film in American cinematic history to star two authentically-cast disabled lead actors in a narrative not about overcoming a disability, the film hits limited theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis on November 15, premiering on digital the same day.

Directed by Alexander Yellen (Z-Nation), Daruma tells the story of Patrick (Tobias Forrest), who discovers he has a daughter as the result of a forgotten fling prior to becoming paralyzed. He takes the girl, Camilla (newcomer Victoria Scott), with the promise of a payout, only to quickly learn that he can’t parent her as she needs. He then enlists the help of his cantankerous neighbor...

Writer Kelli McNeil says she was already “deeply insecure about [her] work” when she handed over an early draft of Daruma — a drama about Patrick (Tobias Forrest), a veteran and quadriplegic who discovers he’s the father of a young girl born from a one-night stand years earlier — to her fiancé, director-cinematographer Alexander Yellen.

“She goes off to the other room, and I start reading the script, and by page two, I’m laughing,” says Yellen, who’s worked in various capacities on shows like Z Nation and Euphoria. “She goes, ‘This is a drama.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not. It’s a dark comedy and it’s great.’”

McNeil began writing the script back in 2017, long before it would premiere at 2023’s Dances With Films Fest in L.A. and screen last month as part of Slamdance’s Unstoppable program, where Peter Farrelly signed on as executive producer to help bolster its profile.

Abigail Hawk (Blue Bloods), Tobias Forrest (Coffee Wars), John Lawson (Untitled Pet Sematery Prequel) and Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show) are among the cast in feature drama Daruma.

Currently filming in Los Angeles, Daruma follows in the footsteps of Coda and The Peanut Butter Falcon in that it features lead actors with disabilities, but the central plot is not centered around disability.

The film follows Patrick (Forrest) who discovers he has a daughter (newcomer Victoria Scott) and agrees to take her on a cross-country roadtrip with his neighbor Robert (Lawson) to live with her maternal grandparents on the opposite side of the country (Bostwick).

Director/Dp Alexander Yellen (Z-Nation) helms the picture from a script that Kelli McNeil-Yellen penned. Both Yellen’s serve as executive producers alongside Producer Jodi Binstock (Z-Nation) with Abigail Hawk and Jonathan Salemi as associate producers. The project is the recipient of the Panavision New Filmmakers Grant,...

The as yet untitled Pet Sematary prequel in production at Paramount has added double hand amputee John W Lawson to the cast in a role that was altered after the actor was cast. The disability-inclusion activist auditioned for the role of "Stanny" in the movie, and although the character was originally not written without hands, the part was rewritten around the actor. The casting has also led to some further details about the movie being revealed by director Lindsey Beer, as even though the movie is already well progressed there has been little revealed about what can be expected from the story, which is expected to flesh out the story of a young Jud Crandall and his first experiences of the Pet Sematary's horrors.

Speaking to Variety, Lawson said, "I have myoelectric hands... or what people commonly call 'cyborg,' But most of the time, it's just my hooks.

Actor, disability-inclusion advocate and double hand amputee John W. Lawson has been cast as Stanny in Paramount Players’ untitled “Pet Sematary” prequel, written and directed by Lindsey Beer.

“I have myoelectric hands… or what people commonly call ‘cyborg,’” Lawson jokes. “But most of the time, it’s just my hooks.”

This news makes the “Pet Sematary” prequel one of the first major horror fiction films to cast a double amputee in a starring role. Production on the movie, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian, began in August.

While many plot details remain under wraps, Paramount did share that in the script, Stanny was not originally without hands — after Lawson auditioned, the role was rewritten to suit him.

Lawson auditioned twice before hearing that new scenes had been written for the character. “And when I got the new sides,” he told Variety, “they had completely written the role for...

David Crow Sep 23, 2016

The backdrop to American Horror Story season 6, our Us chums look at the lost colony of Roanoke, its myths and pop culture appearances...

In case you missed it, the American Horror Story season 6 theme has been revealed, and it is a bloody Roanoke Nightmare indeed. After promoting the new season without releasing a single frame of footage, the ever-cryptic Ryan Murphy has now unveiled his true crime satire-meets-American Gothic to a surprised public, leading many to wonder… what is Roanoke again?

Despite a misconception in some quarters that the name infamously tied to the words “Lost Colony” was made up for the series, and that this fictional ghost story was set in Virginia (Roanoke is in present day North Carolina), Roanoke is indeed a real place, and the ghost stories around it are every bit as strange—if not stranger—than anything American Horror Story has dreamed up.

Stars: Michael Jai White, Steve Austin, Max Ryan, Jon Osbeck, Allen Yates, Ashleigh Barnett, Matthew Bentley, Bobby Burns, Joe Fidler, John W. Lawson | Written by Kevin Carraway, Lawrence Sara | Directed by Kevin Carraway

Dear god, can’t someone give Michael Jai White a break? The star of the underrated Spawn, the fantastic blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite, and the man behind supervillain Bronze Tiger in season 2 of Arrow, has been toiling away in Dtv action movie purgatory for some time now. For every decent action movie he makes – like Never Back Down 2 and Undisputed 2; he also has to appear in ill-judged films like Falcon Rising and this, Deadly Target.

Originally titled Chain of Command (no doubt renamed to stop any confusion with the hundred or so other movies with that moniker), Deadly Target sees White star as Special Operative James Webster who returns home after a tour of duty, only to...