Chicago has seen an increasing number to television shows filming here over the past few years, but things are picking up on the film side as well.
Of note: At least three actors from "Moonlight" will be in Chicago shooting separate projects: • “Captive State”: Shooting in town since last month, from director Rupert Wyatt (executive producer of the Fox series “The Exorcist,” which shot here last fall). Stars Vera Farmiga, John Goodman and Aston Sanders, who played teenage Chiron in the Oscar-winning “Moonlight.” The story: According to a press release about the film, it aims to tackle some big philosophical issues and is described as a “sci-fi thriller set in a Chicago neighborhood nearly a decade after it has been occupied by an extraterrestrial force." The film will use a "grounded sci-fi setting to shine a light on the modern surveillance state and threats to civil liberties and the role of dissent within an authoritarian society.” The story was developed by Wyatt and his wife Erica Beeney, who is best known as the screenwriter behind the 2003 Shia LaBeouf indie “The Battle of Shaker Heights,” the filming of which was captured on a season of the reality series “Project Greenlight.” • “Widows”: Expected to film here later this spring, it is director is Steve McQueen's first film project since his Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave.”
The story: A caper film wherein (male) robbers are killed in a heist-gone-wrong, leaving their widows to get the job done (based on a 1983 British miniseries).
The cast includes yet another “Moonlight” alum, Andre Holland (who plays adult Kevin in “Moonlight’s” third act) alongside recent Oscar-winner Viola Davis, “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya, “The Night Manager’s” Elizabeth Debicki, British theater actress Cynthia Erivo (who won a Tony for her performance as Celie in “A Color Purple”) and possibly Liam Neeson, whom “The Hollywood Reporter” says is in talks to play Davis’ husband.
The script is from Chicago-based novelist and “Gone Girl” screenwriter Gillian Flynn.
• “What They Had”: A small-budget indie expected to shoot here this month, the script is from Elizabeth Chomko and it was the 2015 winner of the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting (one of the more prestigious contests, run by the Oscars organization).
The story: “When her Alzheimer’s-inflicted mother wanders off in a snowy night, a woman who has just left her 30-year marriage travels to her hometown to help her troubled brother convince their in-denial father to put their mother in a nursing home and face the end of their life-long love affair.”
No cast or director has been announced.
