Echo 8 star/director duo Maria Tran and Takashi Hara will debut their back-to-back sci-fi sequels, Five By Five and Echo 8: Beyond at the Urban Action Showcase International Action Film Festival at Regal Cinemas in Times Square on November 14. Prior to their debut, the sequels will also have a trailer premiere on September 3 for Film Industry Night at Jackpot Bar & Grill in Las Vegas. The latter is a free event hosted by Trenton Brisco and John Molinaro, where Tran will also appear as the evening’s special guest.
The two films bookend the current trilogy that began with the lo-fi indie production of the 2022 thriller Echo 8, starring Tran in the lead role from a script by Elizabeth H. Vu. Shot and filmed in Western Sydney, Australia where Tran is from, as production carefully treaded restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the film grew from a microbudget with potential, to surpassing one million streams across more than twenty digital platforms and earning back the film’s investment. Tran and Hara returned to Australia last year to commence principal photography on the sequels to expand the story in both directions.
The first film follows Tran in the role of the titular assassin who rebuffs her own organization after being assigned to target a mysterious woman connected to her past. In Five By Five, the story prequelizes its exploration of the origins of the first film’s villain, Agent 5 (Hara), chronicling his grief-stricken existence and gradual spiral into chaos while climbing the organization’s hierarchy. The subsequent finale, Echo 8: Beyond, takes a slight shift in tone for an action comedy that sees our heroine fending off members of her former organization while protecting her mother from a distance.
Collectively, the trio of films stand exemplary as a boone for independent filmmaking in the 2020s, for an IP created through a grassroots, community-powered approach and backed fervently by cast and crew, martial artists and emerging creatives and fans worldwide.
“There’s something pretty wild about starting with a $6,500 action movie in Western Sydney and now having two films from that universe heading to Times Square,” says Tran. “We never had a traditional studio behind us. We had people who believed in what we were trying to build.”
Originally from Brisbane, Tran began her career in 2007 through community film workshops, and grew her craft as an educator and coordinator and arts trainer across Australia. Since then, she’s collaborated with numerous local creatives in independent film with a number of shortfilms and feature appearances, including the Roger Corman-produced Fist Of The Dragon, and Vietamese thriller, Tracer, before launching her own label in 2017 with Phoenix Eye. Her credits also include 2023 actioner, Suka, and Australian crime series “Last King Of The Cross.”
Now based in Las Vegas where Tran and Hara have lived and operated as of 2022, the pair continue to work across acting, filmmaking and martial arts while maintaining strong creative ties to Australia. Hara, originally from Toyokawa in the Aichi Prefecture, Japan, remains a creative collaborator throughout the Echo 8 journey, contributing both in front of and behind the camera to the trilogy’s physical action and DIY filmmaking identity.
“Takashi and I have always believed in making things rather than waiting for permission,” says Tran. “We’re martial artists, actors and filmmakers. We use what we have, bring people together and figure out how to get the action onto the screen.”
Entering its fourteenth edition this year, the Urban Action Showcase was founded by filmmaker, stuntman and producer Demetrius Angelo, and is billed as the “premier Action Film Showcase, Film Festival, Action Script Competition, and Action Expo.” Launched officially in 2013, the UASIAFF is aims at recognize, promote, facilitate and encourage actors, filmmakers and content creators in the action genre, spotlighting diversity and inclusion in the field and honoring excellence in various aspects of the craft.