Historic Potter Palmers head Corn Bred’s film slate

Writer/producer Eric Anderson of Corn Bred Films

A feature and a documentary about socialite Bertha Honoré and real estate developer Potter Palmer will be the first projects for River Forest husband-wife Eric Anderson and Amelia Dellos’ new production company.

The writer/producers’ Corn Bred Films is rolling out a diverse slate of features, “starting with a few projects we originated ourselves, then branch out as those projects take off,” says Anderson, who has written 13 screenplays in the past decade.

Courting Bertha” is the story of Honoré and Palmer’s romance which played out as both were instrumental in rebuilding Chicago after the 1871 fire.  No director or talent attachments are signed as of yet.

Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago social leader

Dellos’ 24-minute, $125,000 documentary, “Love Under Fire: The Story of Bertha & Potter Palmer,” is being co-produced by Corn Bred Films and Towers Productions.  It’s planned for a planned Ch. 11 airing.

The couple also has four additional projects in various stages of development.  Budgets range from $250,000 for their horror film, “The Devil’s Promenade,” to the $20-$25 million for the Bertha Palmer historical drama.

“We intend to start with the lower budgeted projects that and work our way up toward the higher budgeted projects,” Anderson says.

Steppenwolf actors Jim True-Frost (“The Wire”) Tracy Letts (“August Osage County”), and Tony-winner Deanna Dunagan are attached to “Ink,” a script that Anderson and director Scott Smith of Fulton Market Films adapted from Charles Dickenson’s novel about a reporter for a failing newspaper who’s pressured to cover up a murder.  

Fulton Market’s John Fromstein is executive producer.

“Dream Come True” was co-written by Anderson and Tom Flanigan, a former Second City actor and currently a writer for “Saturday Night Live,” who stars as a neurotic whose voodoo charm brings his anxieties to life.

And there’s the action thriller “W.M.D.,” which Anderson co-wrote with Alex Ranavielo, a Slamdance Writing Competition-winning director.  It’s about a veteran who returns to his crime-ravaged home town and becomes a vigilante.

Couple is producing partners on Rock On! Films’ nine films 

In addition, Anderson and Dellos are branching out as producing partners with indie filmmaker Joe Eckardt’s New York-based Rock On! Films, on a slate of nine pictures, five of which they wrote.

Corn Bred’s writer/producer Amelia DellosOne of Anderson’s scripts for Rock On! is “Black River,” a serial killer thriller, starring Hulk Hogan and DDP (Diamond Dallas Page), about an embattled alcoholic discovering dark secrets in his small town.

In the romantic comedy “Other Plans,” written by Anderson and Dellos and starring Lacey Chabert (“Mean Girls”), a PR executive mistakenly falls for her office building’s maintenance man.

Eckhardt will direct both films. 

After he started Rock On! in 2009, Eckardt optioned three of Anderson and Dellos’ scripts and hired Anderson to write a fourth.

Anderson and Dellos then came aboard as Eckardt’s producing partners, working on PR, marketing and financing for many Rock On projects.  

The couple has marketing backgrounds; Anderson still works in corporate marketing and Dellos earlier had been marketing director for the League of Chicago Theatres, and subsequently opened her own AED Communications and marketing business.  

Phone Corn Bred Films at 708/359-2783.  See cornbredfilms.com