By Variety | Created at 2024-12-05 18:19:52 | Updated at 2024-12-25 21:16:58
2 weeks ago
“Wonder Woman” and “Monster” director Patty Jenkins is lending her cache to the team behind “Tea,” an offbeat comedy about loneliness starring Michael Gandolfini (“The Many Saints of Newark,” the upcoming “Warfare”).
In the short, written and directed by emerging filmmaker Blake Rice, Gandolfini plays a lonely and highly allergic Circuit-Shack employee, who is rehearsing asking out the girl of his dreams (Olivia Nikkanen) when he gets stung in the throat by a hornet. As he goes into anaphylactic shock, the pair have to find a way to communicate as the young woman races to save his life.
“With ‘Tea,’ Blake Rice has made a delightful and original short film with tons of charm and great execution. Definitely the emergence of a great new voice in the medium,” Jenkins said of boarding the project.
“Tea,” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer as the only U.S. film in the shorts competition. The film has gone on to be selected for ten Oscar-qualifying film festivals, winning awards at the Charlotte, Bushwick, Micheaux, Yellowstone, Hollyshorts and I-Fest International Film Festivals. Rice and Gandolfini were honored at the Micheaux Film Festival for outstanding writing and acting, respectively; Gabriella Piazza, who appeared with Gandolfini in “The Many Saints of Newark,” won the best producer prize at the Hollyshorts Film Fest. Michael Cejovic also produced.
In addition to Jenkins, Andrew Carlberg, a producer on the Academy Award-winning live action short “Skin” and an EP on Oscar-nominated shorts “Feeling Through” and Mutt,” also joins “Tea” as an executive producer.
Jenkins is represented by CAA and Danny Passman at Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc. Rice is represented by Kaplan Perron.
