Michigan will be the location late this summer for a major motion picture being financed and produced by TicTock Studios of Holland, Michigan.
TicTock Studios of Holland, Michigan is financing and producing a major motion picture, “What’s Wrong with Virginia,” written by “Milk’s” Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who will make his directing debut.
The film stars Liam Neeson and Jennifer Connelly and will be shot in Michigan in late summer, said Hopwood DePree, TicTock’s CEO.
DePree said he and business partner Scott Brooks received the screenplay earlier this year and “fell in love with it. We met with Lance and felt it would be a great project to be involved in.”
Connelly will play the charming but psychologically disturbed mother of a 16-year-old son. Her 20-year clandestine love with a sheriff (Neeson), who is running for the state senate, is tested when her son begins a relationship with his daughter.
TicTock will finance and produce along with Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, and Eric Watson. Roar’s Jay Froberg and Greg Suess will be exec producers, and Film Bridge International’s Ellen Wander is handling international distribution.
CAA, which packaged the picture, will broker the domestic distribution deal.
“Location scouting will start in a few weeks,” said DePree, who returned to Michigan after several years in L.A. to establish TicTock Studios in 2006. Its mission to bring movies to Michigan by providing financing, development, production resources and job training.
TicTock’s first feature, the relationship comedy “Tug,” directed by L.A.-based screenwriter Abram Makowa, is in the finishing stage.
No distribution company named as yet.
DePree and his sister, Dori, TicTock’s operations manager, are co-founders of the Waterfront Film Festival, a Saugatuck weekend highlight for the past decade. The 2009 Festival takes place June 11-14.
TicTock Studios is located at 433 Columbia Ave., Holland. Phone, 616/393-6800. See
