Monique Phillips has just finished filming a role on the feature film Little Fish.
Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell are set to star in Little Fish, a high-concept, sci-fi love story that will be directed by Chad Hartigan, the filmmaker behind the award-winning Sundance movies Morris From America and This Is Martin Bonner.
Tango Entertainment and Black Bear are financing the feature project, which comes with a bevy of producers: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Rian Cahill of Automatik; Tim Headington and Lia Buman of Tango; Chris Ferguson of Oddfellows Entertainment; and Mattson Tomlin.
Little Fish focuses on a young married couple who fight to keep their love alive in the face of a mysterious pandemic that erases people’s memories. Tomlin wrote the script, adapting an original short story by Aja Gabel.
Raul Castillo and Soko are also joining the cast of the production, which is set to begin shooting later this month.
Hartigan’s coming-of-age dramedy Morris From America won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, while This Is Martin Bonner won the Best of Next! Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and also received the John Cassavetes Award at the 2014 Indie Spirit Awards.
O’Connell starred in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken and on Netflix’s Western series Godless. Next up for the actor is Against All Enemies, a biopic of controversial French actress Jean Seberg featuring Kristen Stewart, Zazie Beetz and Vince Vaughn.
Cooke starred in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and in Thoroughbreds with Anton Yelchin. She will next be seen in The Sound of Metal with Riz Ahmed.
The film follows the Gardners, a family who moves to a remote New England farmstead to escape the hustle of the 21st century. They are busy adapting to their new life when a meteorite crashes into their front yard. It seems to melt into the earth, infecting both the land and the properties of space-time with a strange, otherworldly color, and to the family’s horror they discover the alien force is gradually mutating every life form that it touches including them.
Stanley directed cult hits Hardware and Dust Devil and was famously excised from helming the eventual 1996 pic The Island Of Dr. Moreau based on the book of another famed writer, H.G. Wells.
“I believe fans will be thrilled and satisfied by the epic conclusion we have in store for them,” executive producer Isa Dick Hackett.
“The world of Dorg Van Dango is really hilarious and quirky,” said Josh Scherba, President, DHX Media. “What kid wouldn’t want a super-cool unicorn, a curious alien, an ancient witch and an eerie ghost as his secret, new best friends? When these escapees from Area 51 look to ‘normal kid’ Dorg Van Dango for help, things get crazy. Alongside the team at Cartoon Saloon, we’ve created something really fun and special here, and we’re confident Nickelodeon’s international audience is going to love following the adventures of Dorg and his unusual new friends.”
“I want to thank the very clever people at Nickelodeon for joining Cartoon Saloon and our wonderful colleagues at DHX Media on this journey to bring Dorg and his friends to an international audience,” said Paul Young, CEO of Cartoon Saloon. “Our Emmy-winning comedy writer, Nick Murphy, has been leading a team of Irish and Canadian writers to create scripts that have left me crying laughing. Our creative team of Fabian Erlinghauser, from Cartoon Saloon, and Matt Ferguson, from DHX Media, are preparing a show that has a very colourful, original look. Something fresh for a new generation of kids out there. We’re all very excited!”
A brand new animated comedy for six to 11-year-olds, Dorg Van Dango (52 x 11’) follows the adventures of Dorg, a normal kid, living in the very normal town of Normill. That is, until he meets THE MAGICALS: Jet Lazor, the super-cool unicorn; Patronella, an ancient witch; RD, a curious alien; and Yooki, an eerie ghost. They are all escapees from Area 51 and are in desperate need of help and refuge. To have them blend in with the citizens of Normill, Dorg disguises them as teenagers and hides them in the basement in the local shopping mall. With his new best friends attempting to help navigate life’s challenges, Dorg’s world just got a whole lot less normal and a lot more fun!
There will be a self-contained story in every episode and also like its predecessors, it will lean on science fiction, fantasy and horror to tell tales laced with social commentary, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist, and usually with a moral.
Several high-profile actors have signed on to the show. Sanaa Lathan was the first to come aboard. It was also previously announced that Greg Kinnear and Steven Yeun will co-star in an episode titled “The Traveler.” John Cho, Allison Tolman, and Jacob Tremblay will star in another episode titled “The Wunderkind.” Tremblay’s younger sister, Erica, will also appear in the episode as well.
Gigi Jackman has booked a role in Hallmark’s upcoming MOW, “Undercover Easter” AKA EASTER UNDER WRAPS.