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For Immediate Release April 6, 2007
Phoenix’s New Phoenix Filmworks acquires film rights to Atlanta’s Atlantis Studios’ Paula Peril comic book
(Phoenix) Regional Emmy-winning moviemaker Andy Rodriguez-McCradic is set to write and direct a comic book to life as an action-adventure film in San Diego in June. The movie is a 1940s-styled action-adventure comic book set in the present day entitled Paula Peril: Midnight is the Darkest Hour. It will world premiere at the San Diego Comic Con in July.
”This is a first for us,” says Rodriguez-McCradic,” I have created at least 5 superhero characters for live-action comic books on DVD that are selling well worldwide, but Paula Peril is our first foray into something that is not exclusively Arizona-based, nor superhero based. We’re looking forward to working with Atlantis Studios and the Phoenix and San Diego Film Commissions to put this one together.”
Rodriguez-McCradic’s production group, New Phoenix Filmworks, will lens this production, his 12th movie, this summer on location in San Diego. Some interiors may be shot at the 7,000 square foot New Phoenix Filmworks studio in North Phoenix. The first unit team will be made up of San Diego and Los Angeles based filmmakers. Administration will be out of his New Phoenix Filmworks offices.
Principal photography will be a two week shoot in San Diego.
Paula Peril: Midnight is the Darkest Hour retells the origin story of Paula Perillo, an intrepid reporter for Big City’s Daily Gazette with a nose for stirring up trouble, and attracting plenty of it. She’s on the trail of organized crime lord Anthony Carleoni, a very tough guy who made it out of the old neighborhood the old fashioned way: through crime and intimidation. He has a knack for breaking skulls and organizing people around him with gusto in equal ability. Paula finds that Carleoni is taking control of the Pier District, but learns that taking on organized crime can be, well, perilous. We also find Carleoni’s plans lead to something a little unexpected from a crime lord.
Paula is rivaled by society reporter Veronica Vilencourt, assisted by hunky photographer Jimmy Smith, directed by Big City Daily Gazette editor Slim Jackson, and aided by the strange, shadow-like informant Jack Delphi.
A previous 7-minute short was self-produced by Atlantis Studios, but creator James Watson decided to go with New Phoenix Filmworks to develop the next chapter in Paula’s adventures.”The comic book series has enthusiastic fans who are eager to see more of Paula Peril on film, but we want it done right.” said Watson, ”Andy has proven experience in bringing attractive, strong heroines to life on film, in well-structured, extremely interesting storylines worthy of any Hollywood production.”
The World Premiere of Paula Peril: Midnight is the Darkest Hour will be at the San Diego Comic Con, before 110,000 people, plus all the major film studios and comic book groups in attendance. Primary casting will be in Los Angeles in May.
Paula Peril will be teleplay length, between 45-60 minutes and will be distributed through both New Phoenix Filmworks partners and Atlantis Studios and its partners. It will be available in direct-to-home video and comic book stores nationwide and internationally.
New Phoenix Filmworks is Arizona’s leading indy movie maker with sales in 29 countries on five continents, and distribution agreements in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Amsterdam. New York is the top domestic city for sales, and Tokyo edges London for the top foreign sales destination.
“It’s kinda of wild to think when people from London to Tokyo, Sydney to Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok to Barcelona see Phoenix, they see it through my eyes,” says Rodriguez-McCradic, “It’s pretty mind-blowing…but I think I do a good job of showing off our home base.”
Rodriguez-McCradic is ‘the godfather’ of Arizona indy filmmaking…he has employed approximately 250 Arizonans during his production run since 1993. New Phoenix Filmworks has specialized in live action comic books on DVD since that time, his first movie, Darkfury (1995) was the first film in Arizona history to acquire national and international distribution and is still selling to this day. His other titles include the time-manipulating superhero RetroGirl, a five-part series, PowerCat, a 3-part series, Black Talon, a 2 part series and ActionGirl, a stand-alone production at this time.. Each production is a sexy (but non-adult) take on comic book style super females, geared towards a more sophisticated comic book audience.
The strategy is working: New Phoenix Filmworks has 6400 paying fans in its database, averages 47,000 hits per month, and has had over 1.7 million hits since it went online in 2001. New Phoenix Filmworks was founded by Rodriguez-McCradic in April, 1993.
Atlantis Studios is a Georgia-based sequential arts studio specializing in comics and graphic novels for science fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure licensed properties. Since its creation in 1997, Atlantis Studios has created, published, or produced over 120 published works, many of them developed exclusively for clients in the film and television industry. Most recently, Atlantis published the official graphic novel adaptation of the Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines, the original film produced by Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment.
The Adventures of Paula Peril was developed originally in 1997 as the brainchild of Atlantis Studios owner and CEO James Watson. Originally, the comic was a fun diversion from the daily grind of work-for-hire projects. “I was looking to develop an action-packed series that mixed the sexy tradition of pulps with the genre of teen sleuths like Nancy Drew, and giving the whole thing a modern twist.” says creator Watson, “The result has been phonomenal. Since debuting in February 2006, Paula Peril has consistently been our best-selling title, both nationally and internationally, and fans are looking for more.”
Rodriguez-McCradic is a 30-year veteran of news and media in Arizona, starting with having his first articles published in the Arizona Republic Teen Gazette in 1977 and Arizona Magazine in 1979; contributing columnist with the Phoenix New Times in 1981, news producer for KVOA Tucson in the mid 1980s and KPNX Phoenix in the late 1980s. He earned his Rocky-Mountain Emmy while with the City of Phoenix’s Phoenix Channel in the early 1990s, and was a network tv news correspondent for 5 years with Black Entertainment Television, covering the southwest United States and Southern California in the early to mid 1990s. He has also produced two tv series, “Dreamhouse” a real-estate series in the late 1990s, and “Inspire and Awaken’ a spiritual-exploration series with a four-year run on AZTV from 2002-2005.
For further information, contact Rodriguez-McCradic at 602.343.9816.
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