30 Future Stars
Nothing Bogus readers select 30 talented on-the-rise actors to watch out for.
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Hello! Special issue of the newsletter today with a reader-submitted list of 30 future stars. Some of them you’ll have heard of and some of them you probably won’t have. None are in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. But who knows, maybe some of them will make it into the Iliad (if and when that happens)!
Here’s what’s happening this week:
On July 19 at 10:00 AM, Rockaway Film Festival is hosting the Movie Match Cup before the World Cup final. Teams of 3–5 play 25-minute soccer games, one match at a time in the Arverne Cinema sand. And then watch the final inside. Tickets and more info here.
Emmet Foley is looking for writers with strong, original voices for an upcoming cartoon pilot. Experience with animation preferred. If interested, email ewwetfoley@gmail.com with a brief sample.
On Friday, I’ll be moderating a Q+A with The Kidnapping of Arabella director Carolina Cavalli and star Chris Pine at IFC Center following the 6:45 PM screening of the film.
ActorRise, a searchable database of 7,500+ monologues (plain-English search like “comedic woman under 2 minutes,” plus an “Overdone” filter), is offering Nothing Bogus readers 3 months free with the code FOUNDER3.
Get tickets now for Aidan Cronin’s The Birds Tell Me All There Is to Know which will be playing at Spectacle July 17, 22, 23, and 27.
Eddy Frumpkin and William George-Louis’s All-Starrs series returns to Starr Barr in Brooklyn July 21 at 9:00 PM. Tickets are $10. They’ll be screening films from Oscar winner Jeff Reichert (American Factory) and Oscar-shortlisted producer Farihah Zaman (Ghosts of Sugarland), animator Leah Shore (Puss), experimental filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins (The Misconceived and The Plagiarists), and emerging filmmakers Samuel Bianculli, Arielle Bordow, Tyler “T-Bone” Zonies, Kenna Fojas, and Yael Grunseit (Scratch Off).
Extended deadline for Square Peg Social applications is July 17.
Film Independent Screenwriting Lab application deadline is August 31.
If you would like to list in a future issue, email nothingbogus1@gmail.com with the subject “Listing.” (It’s FREE!) Include your email and all relevant details (price, dates, etc.)
CASTING DEPARTMENT
Future Stars
Nothing Bogus readers select 30 talented on-the-rise actors to watch out for.
Yesterday, taking the subway out to Coney Island, I glimpsed an ad for the new live action Moana movie that cycled through a few moving images of Moana (Catherine Laga'aia) and Maui (The Rock) striking various poses. In the nearly ten years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve seen plenty of horrid ads. But never before have I felt as though I’d ventured so deeply into the uncanny valley of AI slop as I did when I saw this Moana ad. I wish I’d taken a video so I could show you what I’m talking about, but really if you’ve seen the film’s trailer you get the gist. The wig. The CGI. The jokes.
Prior to this week, I thought there was virtually nothing that could prevent a Rock-starring live-action remake of a wildly popular Disney movie from becoming a massive summer hit. But maybe people are more slop sensitive than I give them credit for. Either that, or we’re simply in the middle of a tectonic shift in the movie business. One in which a $750,000 debut horror movie can be a $400 million+ grossing blockbuster and previous sure things like live action remakes and superhero films are flopping.
Hollywood and the press that covers it loves to turn a few data points into a trend. I’m not sure how much the fate of these films is project-specific and how much is indicative of broader changes in movie consumption. But the narrative that moviegoers want something new and fresh, and that a ginormous production budget isn’t a necessity, is good for all of us. If you tell enough people that your under-a-million-dollar feature could be the next Obsession, eventually you might actually believe it.
There probably won’t be another small indie that hits as big as Obsession for a while. And I very much hope — in vain, I know — that we don’t get a wave of lousy imitators. But to me, the encouraging thing that the film does prove is that to land a hit you don’t need an established star; potentially, it’s even more valuable to have a star-making performance.
Finding the next Inde Navarrette, casting them in the perfect role, and then directing them to memorable heights is obviously not easy. But incredible actors who have yet to break out are actually quite abundant. Over the past couple months, I’ve been encouraging readers of this newsletter to submit names of actors they think could and should be future stars. The final list came out to 30 actors, most of whom are young and hungry to work. I’ve compiled that list below for paid subscribers. Submissions were anonymous and most did not include a description of what the given actor has done and why they are special, but I hope you will use the comments to discuss some of these actors — and others you love, too!
