Crackle's Fall Slate: What I Learned About CLEANERS And EXTRACTION
I try to follow a lot of people who work in the entertainment field, namely stunt professionals. I primarily do this on Facebook where I ultimately end up subscribing to a lot of them since their friend lists are full to the hilt. In this case, I vaguely remember-it had to have been sometime between late April or May when I noticed actor, stunt performer and stunt coordinator James Lew posted an interesting set photo of himself and actress Emmanuelle Chriqui (pic below) while filming something called “Cleaners”.
Apparently, in the early part of May, there was a major announcement involving Sony’s online entertainment medium, Crackle. Reports from various sources cited a NewFronts conference in New York City attended by a plethora of stars, representatives and investors. The announcements illustrate a Fall slate of digital content through film and webseries formats, spanning several genres.
One of these includes a series of six half-hour episodes from Full Clip Productions and Sam Worthington titled CLEANERS, with Chriqui starring along with actor David Arquette, slated to air this November. Variety quotes Arquette who said of the announcement, “I like that it’s backed by Sony,…They know what they are doing. And it won’t be canceled after a couple of episodes.”
The series follows two beautiful women contract killers who end up becoming targets themselves when a botched errand leads them to find a sedated 8-year old boy in the trunk of their car. Not a moment sooner they find themselves targets of their own boss, their former allies and the FBI. With their lives on the line, the battle lines drawn and no one to turn to for help, they must assemble their arsenal and use their deadly skills if they are going to take on the rouge’s gallery of assassins who want them dead.
The cast of the series also includes Emily Osment, Missi Pyle, Gina Gershon, Nathan Keyes and Clifton Collins Jr. The series is written and directed by Paul Leyden, and has since wrapped filming with all six parts expected to air simultaneously on Crackle this November.
I should also point out having discovered another photo I found from the set of a contained martial arts feature film which is also slated for the same venue, called EXTRACTION from Ranger 7 Films. The 90-minute feature was written and directed by Tony Giglio, with action direction by James Lew, and follows a team of black-ops soldiers who are sent on a mission to extract a convict from a Russian maximum security prison. The mission goes bust with only one of the soldiers left alive who must fight his way out of the prison with his subject alive.
The film will feature international martial arts actor and stunt performer Jon Foo, whose works include the Hong Kong action adventure HOUSE OF FURY, Tony Jaa‘s explosive Ong Bak follow-up, TOM YUM GOONG, his breakout role in the live action film adaptation of the tournament fighting game, TEKKEN, the John Hyams-directed UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION and the martial arts thriller, BANGKOK REVENGE. The film will also star Danny Glover, Vinnie Jones, Sean Astin, Joanne Kelly, and actor Falk Hentschel, who made his breakout role as Bernard, the train assassin in the 2010 spy action comedy, Knight And Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
Considering Hentschel and Foo are really the only two who possibly stand out with Jones as the ones performing the action, I’m only guessing Foo might be the one playing the hero in the film. He has done a terrific job so far in his movies and I am very eager to see what kind of film Extraction is when Crackle brings it to its debut in September.
There are other series’ listed in the fall slate which you can find in the aforementioned link above. In the meantime, keep your eyes on Crackle, and follow James Lew and Jon Foo on Twitter.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!