Just months since opening their doors, Chiopolis Entertainment LLC has ambitious plans including three feature films and a dozen-plus shorts, renovating its Humboldt Park facility, and hosting the first-ever Humboldt Park Film Festival.
Chiopolis is developing an untitled $250,000 horror feature for production this year, and a “$3-10 million” sci-fi comedy to shoot early next year.
“We’re aiming at some actors from Chicago who are established in L.A.,” said Chiopolis production head Pietro D’Alessio. “We have some offers out there.”
A Chicago native, D’Alessio spent years in L.A., Florida and Utah as a working actor, talent manager and junior production executive before returning to Chicago at the end of last year.
After the sci-fi comedy called “Belly Button,” they’re looking to produce the ambitious “Six Decades,” “a collaboration of six professional writers that covers the lives of two individuals and how they intersect over a period of 60 years,” said D’Alessio.
Chiopolis begins production May 22 on their third short “Your Two O’Clock is Here,” which producer D’Alessio described as “a spiritual piece about a religious figure who returns and is looking for an agent.”
James L. Boyer is directing from a script by executive producer Rev. William H. Hayashi and producer Caleb Thusat. Chiopolis principals Frank J. Kam, Nick Monteleone and Cal Sade are also producing.
They’re shooting at Chiopolis’ 27,000 sq. ft. Humboldt Park studio, currently under renovation after past incarnations as a methadone clinic, a church and a Woolworth’s, D’Alessio said.
Chiopolis is retooling the facility to include its own offices, a shooting stage, and copious additional space for rental to long-term industry tenants as well as special events.
Actor-producer D’Alessio, environmental developer Kam, composer Monteleone and actor Sade founded Chiopolis out of the Chicago Independent Artists Network, which Sade established in December.
The Network meets weekly at the Chiopolis facility, and Chiopolis publicist Karen Pride is the Network’s moderator, but the two groups are independent of one another.
Kam donated the Chiopolis building and is a major investor in Chiopolis, along with Hayashi and other, anonymous, backers.
