Congratulations to Regina’s team Wolf Cop, who devoured the competition at the Banff World Media festival to win a million bucks in financing their movie for real, actual release next year. The Wolf Cop squad has been gunning for the grand prize of CineCoup, “a disruptive model for indie filmmakers to develop, market and finance their feature films” that selects film projects based on Internet votes and jury selection. They’ve been competing since December, and made the final five cut last week.
I spoke by text with Levi Carleton, president of Queen City-based Echolands Creative–the production company behind the winning CineCoup submission. Was he surprised Wolf Cop won? It is, after all, a well-made and fun-looking genre project with werewolves that seemed to have a built-in audience.
“Well, I really believe most people knew the strength of this project was a great fit for this competition,” says Carleton. “But since it’s the first of its kind and [CineCoup’s] very first year, it made the final moments of deliberation completely dizzying.
“I was actually watching one of my daughter’s soccer games at Taylor Field when I saw the first Twitter confirmation,” he says. “I was tearing across the field toward my wife yelling, “we won!” and my other two kids tackled me in the end zone… for real!”
So a big deal, then?
“Echolands was changed forever at that moment,” says Carleton.
What’s next?
“I truly hope we can embrace our local economic and creative advantage [and] harness the support we’ve gained in this contest, and find a way to make it here, where it belongs,” Carleton says. “Pre-production will likely begin immediately. Production, September-ish. And theatrical release in 1,400 Cineplex theatres in February 2014.”
Awoo!
