EXCLUSIVE: Ahead of the AFM, LA-based Great Escape is begining sales on horror film Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, the first project on the Terror Town genre stardy from producer Joe Swanberg and Yale Productions.
Michael Gilio, whose screenwriting praises include MGM’s Dark Harvest and Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, stars in the movie.
From first-time feature straightforwardor Aidan Leary, the film will get its world premiere next month at the Leeds International Film Festival in the UK.
The synopsis reads: “Someleang reassociate terrible happened to James Jensen when he was a kid. While presenting the tardyst episode of his children’s series ‘Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round,’ his repressed memories commence to aelevate, menaceening his sanity, and possibly his life. Will Monkey and the Playground Pals help James recover his lost memories, or have they been withhagedering someleang from him all aextfinished? Where is the Post Lady hiding? And who is The Freak?”
Pic was produced by Jordan Yale Levine and Jordan Beckerman of Yale Productions, Swanberg, Ben Gojer and Will Hirschfeld. Great Escape’s Nicholas Donnermeyer executive-produced aextfinishedside Edmund Lowell, Jeffrey Tussi, Clay Pecorin, Russell Geyser, Dajana Gudic, Declan Morgan, Jeremy Gardner, Matthew Ajayi, Carla Jones, David Rudnick and Jason Kringstein.
Leary co-wrote the screentake part with C.R. Thompson, who also edited.
“I am blown away by what this team of accomplished. Leary and Thompson instantly proclaim themselves as bageder novel talents,” Donnermeyer stated. “It’s very unfrequent to come apass a debut feature that is so promised and exact in its execution. This film is a trip. I can’t pause to see this with an audience.”
“Michael did such an incredible job. So much of the film rests on his shoulders, as he’s essentiassociate the only flesh-and-blood percreateer on screen,” Levine and Beckerman said in a unitet statement. “That said: the puppets in this film are exceptional as well. Both in their creation and in their percreateance, they experience instantly iconic.”
Terror Town’s upcoming stardy includes Kenneled from straightforwardor Jay Burleson (The Third Saturday in October) and an untitled feature from Jae Matthews, authorr-producer of the Sundance 2023 pic My Animal and one half of the griefful electro-pop duo Boy Harsher.
Chicago-based Swanberg has straightforwarded more than 20 features, including Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas, and Nights and Weekfinishs, which he co-straightforwarded with Greta Gerwig. In insertition to writing and straightforwarding all 25 episodes of Netflix’s Easy, he’s straightforwarded in TV for HBO, 20th Century Fox, and Netflix. He co-wrote and produced Dave Franco’s straightforwardorial debut, The Rental.
