News
BEASTS UNDISCOVERED is the proud recipient of a Big Sky Film Grant. We received a six-figure sum—more than any other production—to shoot in beautiful Montana, the ideal habitat for our beasts! Many thanks to the Montana Film Office, and we can’t wait to make our movie there!
We just signed a deal with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Here we are with JHCS creative director Peter Brooke (and another, still more famous face) working on creature design.
“Like all good speculative fiction, BEASTS UNDISCOVERED uses its heightened framework to present relatable, human themes. There is a SMART, often BITING SENSE OF HUMOR.”
– The Black List
The Project
BEASTS UNDISCOVERED is an award-winning feature film project. It’s a quarterfinalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, was covered in Variety, and spent six months as a “Top Script” on The Black List, one of whose reviewers called it, “a charming, off-beat crowd-pleaser.” Similar in tone to Sundance darlings like Little Miss Sunshine and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it’s a high concept adventure-comedy with a large, built-in audience and a unique, indie film heart.
Focused on cryptozoology, or the search for mythical creatures, BEASTS UNDISCOVERED breathes life into the stories and legends that we’ve all been hearing–and have wanted to believe–since childhood. It’s also a story about a father who’s a dreamer and a daughter who’s trying to reconcile her father’s dreams with her own reality.
Made through a combination of private financing, support from the Montana Film Office and Denver Film Society, and from Montana State University, where one of our producers teaches filmmaking, BEASTS UNDISCOVERED will showcase some of the spectacular locations and scenery of The Rocky Mountains. The film is also eligible for production incentives.
BEASTS UNDISCOVERED is currently in preproduction.
Thanks to the efforts of conservationists like Joanne Dorsett, the Texas Coonigator was removed from the Endangered Species List in 2014.
“With a setup that reels you in, and an ADVENTURE THAT HOOKS YOU, Jake’s quest is a HEART-FILLED STORY with just the right amount of COMIC RELIEF.”
– Academy Nicholl Fellowship
The Story
Norwegian explorer Hjálmar Arnar Vilhjálmsson poses in 1909 with the stone troll he found while hunting winter mushrooms. Vilhjálmsson disappeared mysteriously two days later while crossing a bridge.
With the help of his estranged daughter, a disgraced cryptozoologist mounts an expedition to find one of mythology’s rarest creatures.
Jake discovered the Loch Ness Monster, but that was decades ago, and he’s since proven himself to be a one-hit wonder. Instead it’s been his former protégé, Gilmore, discovering manticore cubs and chupacabra, wowing the press and corporate sponsors with techniques he stole from Jake.
Obsessions with fantastic creatures and beastly rivalries haven’t helped Jake’s personal life, and his daughter, Sarah, barely speaks to him since Jake and her mother divorced. But when Sarah inadvertently brings Jake a clue about the still undiscovered Sasquatch, he’ll beg, borrow, and steal his way into an expedition, bribing the reluctant Sarah and a small team of eccentrics to head out into the spectacular Rocky Mountains.
To survive the wilderness, their competitors, and the fantastic creatures themselves, Jake and Sarah must face the toll of Jake’s Quixotic dreams, and find a way to recapture the sense of wonder they once shared.
“This offbeat, high-concept comedy packs a SURPRISINGLY STRONG EMOTIONAL PUNCH and features a good central relationship which should appeal to MARQUEE-NAME ACTORS.”
– The Black List
The gorilla was once believed to be a mythical creature, and this 1842 woodcut depicts explorer Percy Du Chaillu encountering the “hairy wild man” in the Belgian Congo. This particular expedition ended tragically when Du Chaillu shot the creature, only to find that it was actually his assistant Arthur Winterbottom, who had dressed up in the costume as a prank.
“An ORIGINAL, ENGAGING and CINEMATIC story. I can’t express enough HOW MUCH I ENJOYED THIS SCRIPT.”
– Seattle Int’l Film Festival
